“Choose to Challenge.” That is the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day—a day when we celebrate women’s achievements and raise awareness about the issues and biases women face. 

At the Cognizant U.S. Foundation, our mission is to inspire, educate and prepare all people for success in the workforce of today and tomorrow—which means we choose to challenge the barriers that prevent women from having equitable access to the educational opportunities and career pathways needed to succeed in the tech industry, where women make up less than 30% of the workforce. 

This imbalance is untenable, and we are proud of our grantees and their tireless work to remove these barriers, creating new and innovative opportunities for women to secure and thrive in academic programs, internships and high-paying tech careers.

Break Through Tech is one such organization. Break Through Tech was created to address the national crisis of gender inequality in tech by increasing the share of bachelor’s degrees in computing awarded to women. Break Through Tech saw substantial success at City University of New York (CUNY), its first partner institution, with an almost 62% increase in the number of women pursuing undergraduate degrees in computer science and related fields—and, a 92% increase in women actually graduating from CUNY with those degrees.

WorkingNation recently featured Break Through Tech in its Work in Progress podcast, where they interviewed alumna Yasmeen Munasser, who shared how the program helped her through her hesitancy to study computer science after seeing other students in the courses were “majority males.”

“There were moments where I did feel intimidated, not only was I overcoming being the first in my family to pursue college, but now as a Muslim woman, as a Yemeni woman, as an American woman, I am pursuing a male-dominated field. These were challenges to overcome,” Munasser said in the interview. “Women should be able to pursue any field that they are passionate about. And computer science was something I was really passionate about—so I went for it.”

Just last week, Break Through Tech announced its expansion into the Washington DC area, now it’s third city of operation.

We are also proud of our decision to join and invest in Reboot Representation, a coalition of tech companies committed to doubling the number of Black, Latina, and Native American women receiving computing degrees by 2025.

Black, Latinx, and Native American women comprise 18% of the U.S. population, yet they represent only 4% of computing degree recipients—a figure that has decreased in recent years. Reboot Representation supports organizations and educational institutions working to recruit, retain, and graduate women of color with degrees in computer science, helping them secure and thrive in technology jobs.

In a recent ‘fireside chat’ with CodePath, Reboot Representation CEO Dwana Franklin-Davis, shared her own experience as a woman in color in the tech industry—full discussion below:

Today we recognize just a couple of our grantees working to dismantle the barriers women face in the tech industry, create equitable pathways and ensure that once hired, women are supported in their careers. This work is far from over—and is something we champion every day of the year.