How an Insult Became a Movement

Canada won gold. Always ran an ad. I made a sticker. It snowballed.

Do you remember the first time someone said it?

You throw like a girl. You run like a girl. You play like a girl.

You knew exactly what they meant. Weak. Silly. Not quite good enough.

Then you started a career in tech. And they did it again.

Different words, same message.

Not technical enough. Too assertive. Not the right fit.

They might as well have said you code like a girl.

Dearest Gentle Reader, one does not simply name a publication after an insult without a very good story.

This is that story.

Hockey Gold

To understand where the name came from, I need to take you back to the 2014 Olympics and the Women’s Gold Medal Final.

I know a Canadian talking about hockey, how cliché.

At the beginning of the third period team USA scored, making the score 2-0.

We thought it was over.

Then Brianne Jenner scored with 3:35 left. 2-1. We had a pulse!

The whole country leaned forward.

Then — 55 seconds left in regulation — Marie-Philip Poulin scored.

TIED. 2-2.

WE WERE GOING TO OVERTIME!!!

Canada held its breath.

Seven minutes into overtime, the great Haley Wickenheiser drew a penalty on American Hilary Knight.

We were on the power play. One chance. Don’t blow it.

Poulin got the puck.

SHE SHOOTS. SHE SCORES.

WE WON!!! CANADA WON GOLD!!!

It was one of the most dramatic comebacks in Olympic history.

Stay with me. It’s worth it.

For weeks after, kids were playing street hockey and doing the play-by-play.

Not Crosby. Not Gretzky. Wickenheiser. Poulin.

Boys were calling each other out for playing like girls. Something that would have come to blows just months before. Now it was something to aspire to.

The Super Bowl Commercial

If you watched the Super Bowl in February 2015, you may remember this one.

Always ran an ad. They asked men, women, and boys to:

• Run like a girl.

• Throw like a girl.

• Fight like a girl.

You can probably guess what happened.

Weak. Silly. Floppy. Because that’s what we’d all been taught that phrase meant.

Then they asked girls to do the same thing.

The girls did it with gusto, with speed, with heart, and it didn’t look weak or silly it was triumphant.

Then the producers went back to the first group and showed them what the girls had actually done. They were ashamed. They had never thought about the implications before. It completely changed their perspective.

The message was simple:

Doing things like a girl shouldn't be an insult.
It should be something to aspire to.

The Sticker that Started it All

Both the gold medal and this ad were still very much in the air in the spring of 2015 when I was invited to participate in Think About Math, a STEM workshop for Grade 9 girls at the University of Waterloo.

The event brought in women with math degrees from Waterloo to talk about where that education could take them. I had a master's in math from Waterloo and a career in tech. I said yes.

I didn’t want to be some boring old lady telling them about my job. I wanted to inspire them. I asked my company, D2L, for swag to bring. D2L makes education software. The kind these same high school students use every single day.

D2L gave me pens.

Corporate pens….. For Grade 9 girls.

BORING!

I knew I needed something better. I also knew that every Grade 9 student in Ontario had been given a Chromebook for the duration of high school. So no matter their background, they all had a computer. And the school encouraged them to put stickers on it so each one looked different.

A lightbulb went off.

I found an androgynous girl in clip art online. Added the words: Code Like a Girl. Ordered 80 stickers from a Canadian company and paid for them out of my own pocket.

This is the Sticker I created.

I thought 80 would be enough.

I was wrong.

The girls loved them. And so did every other woman in the room.

I ran out of stickers. All 80 of them.

The Publication

A couple of months after Think About Math, I bought the domains codelikeagirl.io and likeagirl.io and built a small website. I called it Code Like a Girl.

I had no idea what it was going to be. Something involving Girl in STEM and Women in Tech. It existed. That’s about all I can say for it.

But by late 2015, something was becoming clear. I wanted to do more than tell my own story. I wanted a space where other women in tech could tell theirs. Where we could show girls what was possible in STEM. Where male allies could come and learn to do better.

A place that didn’t exist yet.

And wouldn’t you know it. The perfect name was just sitting there waiting.

On January 11, 2016, I pointed the URL at Medium, and Code Like a Girl became a publication.

Ten years later, here we are.

And if you're reading this, you're part of it.

We still have a little girl inside us who was told she didn't belong here.

And most of us grew up to be women who were told the same thing.

This publication is for her — for you.

We code like a girl. And we're proud of it.

If This Resonated With You

Most of what gets written about women in tech stays at the surface. We don’t.

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If you’re not subscribed yet, start there. It’s free.

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Each month, I share the specific frameworks that broke through it.

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