Typing away at her keyboard, she is working diligently. Computers surround her as she continues her toil. This is an uncommon scene in the tech industry because of its heavy male dominance; there are seven males to every three females in the tech industry according to a Stanford study. The Technovation challenge, is a competition for female students ages 10 to 23 to develop an entrepreneurial application to help close the gender gap in the technology world.

Technovation’s main goal is to try to close the gender gap in the tech industry. To do this they emphasize that when entering no previous technology experience is required, as a program will help students learn.

Piedmont High School has two teams of four girls that have entered in the challenge, with the help of computers teacher Jana Branisa, computers teacher Nathan Mattix, librarian Susan Stutzman, and parent Vince Monica as advisors.

The eight girls that are competing are sophomore Alexandra Shoptaugh, juniors Ilona Bodnar, Charlotte Moxley, Tiffany Zhou, Min Hong Yang, Remy Afong, and seniors Chloe Jiang, and Daniella Mohazab.

“I recruited [the girls] last year, but we were too late to enter, so we practiced and learned the competition,” Branisa said.

Technovation, the all girls tech contest, started in 2010 with just 45 students from Palo Alto participating, and has grown in the last four years to be the largest all female tech competition, according to the Technovations website. Since the contest was founded participants have created 163 mobile apps.

The previous winning team created an app called Arrive, which is a mobile attendance app that students would use to check in when they arrive at school, marking their attendance.

Bodnar said she found the contest by Googling tech clubs, because she was interested in learning technology. She then found that Piedmont had teams.

Bodnar said that their app is called Job Fish.

Moxley said “Our app is about finding jobs for youths.” Bodnar said that it facilitates connecting teens and adults in finding jobs, such as babysitting.

Branisa said that 20 and 30 years ago there were jobs for women in the tech industry, but not a lot of women that wanted jobs. Then 10 to 15 years ago, around the new century, there were no jobs in the industry but women that were eager. Now there are opportunities and interest for women in the tech world.

“We have a lot of young women that are interested, and they are willing, and now they have places to go,” Branisa said.