In a recent study, RJMetrics found that the tech community was about 29% female, with some cities scoring as low as 17% or 20%. Sam Altman just released some Y Combinator statistics on diversity, revealing that 19.5% of the startups they’ve funded this year have women on the founding team. Women are underrepresented in startups, and particularly in programming, and many organizations are out to change that.
Coding bootcamps are the newest wave of programming education, offering students an intensive education in coding over several months. Many programs offer help landing a job afterward, or give you a refund if you don’t get hired in a certain amount of time.
Tatiana Tylosky recently compiled a list of 16 coding bootcamp scholarships for women on the blog at Thinkful, an online technology education site. Here are some of the standouts:
- Dev Bootcamp (New York, Chicago, San Francisco): Women who are members of Girl Develop It are eligible for one of 10 Girl Develop It scholarships in 2014, which give you a $2,500 discount on tuition.
- Metis (New York, Boston): Women and minorities are eligible for a $2,000 scholarship.
- General Assembly (New York only): The Google Fellowship for Women offers a discount of $8,500 on the Web Development Immersive course, lowering the cost to $3,000. This scholarship is part of the Opportunity Fund, a program designed to promote diversity in partnership with organizations like Google and Microsoft. If you take the scholarship, you have to do 100 hours of youth mentoring with tech education nonprofits.
- Ironhack (Miami, Madrid, Barcelona): Women are eligible for a scholarship of 1000 euros (almost $1,350).
- RefactorU (Boulder): Women (as well as retired and active military personnel and their spouses) get a 20% discount on the Web Development bootcamp, worth $2,700.
Read the full list of 16 programming bootcamp scholarships for women.