A lot of women are making their way to the world of IT

The amount of women making their way into IT has had a great increase during the last few years. 

In 2022, there were 3413 applicants to kood/Jõhvi, from which the highest percentage were women (49%), 48% were men and 3% did not specify their gender. The amount of women applicants is almost 10% more than last year! All of them are doing their first steps to get more familiar with the IT world.

A lot of amazing women came to the 3-week Selection Sprint in order to make their way to the kood/Jõhvi program. “Women think that coding is rocket science. Well, it’s not. You don’t need to know or learn higher maths or physics but rather make use of your logical thinking skills. This understanding also seems to be one of the main reasons for the high interest in kood/Jõhvi,” says one of the Sprinters, Merle Protsin.

The high percentage of women was a positive surprise for the head of school Karin Künnapas. “Women are still scared to step into IT. But our application numbers are showing that the stigmatised understanding is finally making its way to the history books. IT knowledge opens a lot of doors in todays tech-driven world and kood/Jõhvis mission is to make these skills accessible for everyone.”

Among the founders of kood/Jõhvi, there are 4 awesome women:
Merlin Seeman (Managing Partner at Hedman law firm);
Mari-Liis Kitter (Partner at Miltton New Nordics);
Maarja Pehk (former CEO of Latitude 59 and current Director of FDI at Invest in Estonia);
and Ede Tamkivi (CEO of Eesti 2.0)

And we have two awesome women as our heads of school – Karin Künnapas and Elle-Mari Pappel. Talk about gathering powerful women behind a powerful institution.

A longer news clip about women making their way to IT in the Estonian television is available from here.