It was the International Day of Women and Girls in Science last Saturday, a day dedicated to recognizing the contributions females have made to the science and technology communities. Though there is now an official day to celebrate women in this sector, women are still under-represented and often excluded in the tech industry.

Cui Yiran, a coder at LeanCloud, is the only female computer programmer in a team of 30. But despite the imbalance, she says the lack of female colleagues is not uncommon in her industry, which has long been dominated by men. She says that she does not want to conform to gender expectations because she does not care if this job was made for a man or woman, as long as it makes her happy, she’ll do it.

Gu Xi is the co-founder of TechieCat, the first female tech community in China. She says the NGO is dedicated to building a community for females working in the tech sector. TechieCat holds regular meetings for girls in tech to share and grow together, but Gu was shocked to hear from a Google engineer in Hong Kong that she was the only female in her office, and attending TechieCat events was merely because she felt so lonely. She hoped to meet other women in the industry through the gathering. Gu says some women come to learn, while others come to the events to give. It is a very supportive community.

While women remain under-represented in R&D across the world, the imbalance is especially stark in East Asia. It is the sense of self-achievement and self-fulfillment that keeps the ladies going. As Gu says, coding is something you can pick up instantly, and you can see the results immediately. With every input of codes, you can see how a website changes, or a robot moves.

This issue is not just advocated by women anymore. Wen Yang, who had a engineering job with a Chinese state-owned company, quit to start Coding Girls Club. His organization holds workshops and boot camps for aspiring female computer engineers. He hopes to encourage girls to pursue this career path, as he believes women are equally capable of doing this job as their male counterparts. He believes that promoting gender equality awareness is important for all.

Meanwhile, global IT consulting firm ThoughtWorks is notorious for being the hardest company to interview with in Silicon Valley. It turns out the company is also famous for being a loud advocate for promoting females to leadership roles and hiring a high number of women engineers. 

With NGOS like TechieCat dedicated to building an active community of female-coders, female-only boot camps run by the likes of Coding Girls Club and global leaders like Thoughtworks setting an example by creating equal employment opportunities, China’s gender imbalance in its tech and science community may see a change.