Why We Started TechnovateHer
TechnovateHer started with a frustration that has data behind it. For more than a decade, the share of women in computing and technology roles has barely moved. Globally, women hold roughly one in four tech jobs, and in many countries the number is lower. In Canada, women make up close to a quarter of the tech workforce despite being more than half of the overall workforce. The trend line has been flat for years, and in some subfields, like AI and machine learning, it has actually gone backwards.
The gap is wider still for Black women and girls. Research from groups like the Pew Research Center and various industry diversity reports consistently shows that Black women are among the most underrepresented groups in technology, often making up single-digit percentages of the tech workforce at major companies. This is not because of a lack of interest or ability. Studies of young people show that Black girls express interest in computing at rates comparable to their peers. What differs is access, encouragement, and the presence of people who look like them already doing the work.
When we dug into why the numbers stay stuck, a few patterns kept showing up. The first is the confidence gap, which is real and measurable. Girls often rate their own ability in computing lower than boys do, even when their actual performance is equal. The second is the pipeline leak, the way people drop out at each stage. A girl who is interested in tech in elementary school may lose that interest by high school if she never sees it modeled, never gets to try it hands-on, or absorbs the message that it is not for her. The third is the belonging problem, the quiet, daily experience of being the only woman, or the only Black woman, in a room, a class, or a meeting.
None of these problems get solved by waiting. They get solved by intervention, by creating the spaces and the moments that change the story a girl tells herself about whether she belongs. That is what TechnovateHer is for. We are a non-profit based in Ontario, and our approach is simple and evidence-backed. We get women and girls into rooms where they can actually try technology, with their own hands, guided by other women who already work in the field. We focus on the early stages, the moments where interest either catches fire or quietly dies.
We are deliberately beginner-first. A lot of tech education assumes you already know things, or that you are willing to push through feeling lost for a long time before anything clicks. We reject that. Our workshops are built so that within the first session, you do something real and you understand what you did. That early win matters more than people realize. Research on learning shows that a sense of progress and competence in the first encounter with a subject dramatically increases whether someone continues. We design for that first win on purpose.
We also believe, strongly, that you do not need to learn to write code to participate in technology in 2026. The tools have changed. We will write more about this in other posts, but the short version is that modern AI tools let you build, create, and explore using plain language. The wall that used to stand between a curious person and a working result is much lower than it was even three years ago. That changes who gets to take part, and it is central to why we think now is the moment to push hard on closing this gap.
Our promise is this. If you are a woman or a girl who has ever been curious about technology but felt like it was not for you, we built this for you. You do not need experience. You do not need to be good at math. You do not need to know what a single technical word means. You need curiosity, and we will handle the rest, one workshop, one conversation, and one first win at a time. We would love for you to be part of this from the very beginning.