The Best Career To Secure Your Financial Future - Amy Efstathis, Code Like a Girl

“Currently, there are nearly 500,000 women over the age of 45 in Australia facing homeless. If you’re a single mother who rents, there is a 65% chance you will become homeless in your lifetime”

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Hey SHC Community,

Welcome to this week’s episode with Amy Efstathis on the Sisterhood Club Podcast. Amy is the Partnerships and Fundraising Manager for Code Like a Girl.

Code Like a Girl is a collective of women who found each other through a love of code. And the more women in tech they meet, the more women in tech they think there should be. But with only 16%* of technologists being women, they've come up short. That's why Code Like a Girl's social enterprise is on a mission to introduce women of all ages and backgrounds to code, confident that they'll love it as much as we do.

Amy is a passionate advocate for women and women's equity. Helping women to be the best people they can be and to have a say in their own lives.

She's been working for cause-related organisations for 15 years and when Code Like a Girl advertised the Fundraising and Partnerships Manager role, she jumped at it, knowing she was getting to work with "inspirational women every day."

Amy’s passion is driven by the following:

* Staggering statistics around women getting left behind (across all areas)

* The fact that half a million women in Australia over the age of 45 are facing homelessness.

“If you're a single mother who rents and works part-time, there is a 65% chance that you will become homeless in your lifetime.”

In the podcast, Amy explains that this is due to a myriad of reasons, including;

* Women making certain career choices

* Unaffordable housing

* Superannuation

* Putting care of others before themselves

“Women have systemically been excluded from careers like technology, but this is where people's incomes are growing substantially and significantly.

"In technology, we need to fill 60,000 roles per year for the next few years. With only 7,000 people coming out of University each year, there is a massive gap in the market. Technology is a future-proof career to help women solidify their future economic state and ensure lifelong financial stability. However, we don't go into it because we're told: it's for boys, and it's entirely not".

The Technology industry is growing so fast that we have a talent drought; organisations are becoming more intelligent, more flexible and welcoming to women and diverse individuals because they realise it needs a more diverse talent pool.

The reason girls don't often move into technology is that caring is a traditionally feminine trait. “After all, little girls want to be someone - they fall into care careers because their first role model is usually their mothers or carers.” Little girls embody the people they see around them in their play because it's usually their mother, grandmother and Aunties.

Recent advice from more prominent technology companies like AWS, ANZ, 99 Designs, and EY has said that "skills aren't as important as an attitude - but having the attitude of a lifelong learner is."

We finish the podcast by discussing the money that having a career in technology can provide.

"We get to live a life by our design if money isn't an issue - money gives us power and control over our own lives."

Our conversation on today's podcast was full of great topics and questions, including:

💜 What are the main barriers of entry to technology for women to enter technology jobs?

💜 What can mothers do if they have young girls to get them curious about coding?

💜 Why women don't need to be a "coder" to have a job in technology.

💜 What can businesses be doing to attract more females into technology?

💜 Advice for women looking for a new challenge or a career move into technology.

We hope you enjoy today’s episode as much as we did.

Georgie and Pam x

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