Our Mission

Our mission is to foster a community at Amherst College where womxn can feel seen, connected, and supported in their pursuits of technology and computer science.

What Do We Do?
At WiCS, we aim to strengthen and enrich our community in both the practical and the social aspects of tech.
Workshops Our events involve workshops built towards improving technical skills, as well as opportunities to educate our members on the obstacles that face womxn today.	Tech Conferences Recurring events we organize include trips to tech conferences for our students, including the Grace Hopper Celebration and the WeCode tech conferences.	WiCS Alumni Speaker Series And, most notably, we have our annual WiCS Alumni Speaker Series, where we feature Amherst alumni to discuss their experiences as womxn in tech post-graduation.

Why Do We Do It?	Womxn vs Women
There is a severe lack of womxn’s representation in STEM fields, especially in tech. In the US, womxn only comprise 18% of the degrees earned in computer science; men comprise the remaining 82%. By missing one-half of the population, companies lose the potential for groundbreaking, out-of-the-box innovations. Moreover, certain issues are not seen, let alone solved. (For example, Apple’s Health app didn’t have the ability to track menstruation for an entire year!) The lack of gender diversity in the workplace—and thus in products—begins in the classroom. Most colleges boast a 50-50 ratio in the overall student demographic, and introductory courses for computer science commonly reflect this even ratio. However, it becomes troublingly skewed in higher-level courses. This low retention rate can be attributed to multiple reasons, including a lack of womxn role models in technology, a confidence gap between genders, and gender stereotypes (such as the male geek-programmer). The low-retention-rate phenomenon is so prevalent that it has been coined the “leaky pipeline.” Evidently, womxn in tech need to be supported, and WiCS serves to do so at the root: college. TechRepublic: The State of Women in Computer Science NPR: Why Aren’t There More Women in Tech? Verge: Apple promised an expansive health app, so why can’t I track menstruation?