The Press in Toulouse | A training on digital technology… for women only

(Toulouse) To encourage women to take an interest in the field of computer science, a school in Toulouse has opened a training course reserved for them. It brings together women of all ages who sometimes had no idea what a line of code was. They learn programming… and often stay there.

At 26, Hafida Boukhari already has an engineering degree under her belt. Next to her, Antoneta Oruna, 58, has a completely different profile: she was an entrepreneur for a while, but she is changing career paths due to health problems.

Together, they follow a free six-week training course called “hackeuses”, during which they will touch on all sorts of aspects of computer development and eventually move on to specific, more advanced training.

They are at Simplon.co, a “social and solidarity” company established in 130 locations in France which aims to bring people into the IT world who would probably never have been there.

Women, young people from working-class neighborhoods, asylum seekers, for example. “It’s the idea of ​​saying: try!” summarizes Cécile Couderc, head of the Toulouse school.

This training for women only is still relatively young in Toulouse. In the old house where the school is located, in the deprived district of Bellefontaine, about twenty women are busy with their instructor.

They come from different backgrounds and are admitted to this exploratory training without any prerequisites, other than being motivated and committing to completing it.

Antoneta has no idea about coding. “Nothing,” she says. Ilse, for her part, has already “coded a little as a hobby.”

“But we still manage to balance each other out and help each other. There’s no feeling of being inferior or superior, we complement each other,” says Ilse, who prefers to be identified by her first name only.

Even those who are not “technically strong bring something to the group, to the organization of work or in relation to their past experiences,” adds Cécile Couderc.

Trainer Bastien Krettly says that at the beginning, you almost have to “slow down those who are doing well” so that they all manage to work together.

At the time of the passage of The Pressthe students finished a website mockup module and would move on to HTML and CSS development the next day.

“They were allowed to try”

When “hacker” training is given before standard training, the Simplon.co organization succeeds in achieving parity among its students in subsequent training.

“We targeted them, we told them that they had their place, we allowed them to try,” lists Cécile Couderc.

She herself can testify to this. Formerly in the field of communications, she started with the “hackeuses” program, before doing more advanced training as a web developer, then being hired by Simplon.co.

Web developer turned trainer, Bastien Krettly says that the idea of ​​the “hackeuses” training is to open up “horizons that they never imagined” for women.

He himself has experienced the absence of women in the field. “We give the impression that women are not suited to the digital profession, when that is not true at all,” he says.

Ilse says she feels “much more legitimate” in her women-only class.

The young woman recalls her engineering school, where there were only six girls out of about 200 students. She then worked as an engineer. “I was in a field where I was the only woman on a project. All my interlocutors were men,” adds Ilse.

In work-study programs with internships in companies, students sometimes say that it is “not always easy around the coffee machine”, agrees the school’s director, Cécile Couderc.

Simplon.co therefore helps women to integrate by raising awareness among the companies that host them. “We tell them: ‘We’re going to train them for free, then welcome them.’ It’s complicated, though,” says Cécile Couderc.

There has been criticism of the all-female line-up, particularly on social media, she says.

“They tell us: ‘Single-sex, how horrible! It’s discriminatory!’ The poor [élèves]they take it badly, sometimes. But it’s a good way to talk about it, to tell them: don’t let it get you down,” says Cécile Couderc.

And then, she adds, all the other Simplon.co training courses are mixed. To those who complain that the “hackers” training course is closed to them, “we can explain it,” says Cécile Couderc.

“Everything else is for you, just stay calm,” she said with a laugh.