Introducing WEST by Box, Facebook and Pinterest

Last week, the Facebook Newsroom announced a new initiative that the social network has launched in conjunction with Box and Pinterest. WEST, as its known, stands for Women Entering and Staying in Tech and, in my mind, is a fantastic program.

When it comes to Computer Science, there has long been a gender gap in the industry, both in workforce’s across the globe and in the educational pipelines where tomorrow’s generation of Computer Scientists will emerge.

In fact, the United States Census Bureau has reported that technical roles in the country will continue to increase and are expected to reach 1.4 million by 2020. However, the number of women filling these positions has been steadily declining since the 1990s.

That’s why Facebook, Pinterest and Box have teamed up to create WEST, a one-on-one mentorship program that is designed to help more women adopt and ultimately flourish in these types of technical role.

The aim is to bring together highly experienced women from the top technology companies across the industry to help build and maintain a focussed mentorship program. It will be driven by the day-to-day work that these individuals do and geared towards the exciting technical opportunities that are becoming available.

Opening in 2015, WEST will be looking to attract female mentees in their early to middle career stages. It will feature a series of 1:1 and group interactions face-to-face, as well as online sessions over the course of a year.

Initially, the program will be open to women in the Bay Area in the U.S. but if it proves successful then we can hope to see an expansion going forward. I for one, hope that UK women will be able to take advantage of this great initiative in the future.

Mentorship is something that is very powerful and can help shape an individual’s life including their career choices, lifestyle outcomes and overall success.

Influential individuals, like Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, have long voiced their opinions about the need for more women in technical roles. The Facebook COO famously said in an interview with 60 Minutes that, “A man and a man at a bar at a hotel during a work trip – that looks like mentoring. A man and a woman at a bar at a hotel on a work trip, that doesn’t look like mentoring to anyone.”

It speaks volumes that three huge companies, like Facebook, Box and Pinterest, have decided to undertake this venture. They obviously want to tackle a problem that has been developing for some time. Hopefully, their lead will make other businesses take note and perhaps even offer similar programs.

When industry giants make a decision to create a bespoke mentoring program for women from the ground up, it can only lead to more diversity in the technical industry as a whole going forward.

You can find out a little more about WEST here. There’s even an application form but unless you live in the Bay Area in the United States it’s obsolete at present.

What’s your view on WEST? Should women be given a helping hand with mentorship programs like this or will doing so ultimately put men at a disadvantage?

I’d love to hear your thoughts below…