The Wǒ Men podcast is a bi-weekly discussion of life in China hosted by Yajun Zhang and Jingjing Zhang. Previous episodes of the Wǒ Men podcast can be found here, and you can find Wǒ Men on iTunes here.
Who says that women and coding have nothing to do with each other? Gu Xi didn’t believe that and broke the barrier by building one of the first Chinese tech communities for women when she was 18 years-old (which makes Jingjing and Yajun wonder what they missed when they were 18).
In this community, called TechieCat, she worked with the team to provide online courses and offline conferences for women who are interested in tech but feel they can’t get the support they need in such a male-dominated industry.
Over the last three years, the community has grown rapidly to 4,000 members.
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Different from older generations, Gu Xi and the post-’95 generation (those born after 1995) grew up with internet. They have more access to information and awareness of what they want. But they still have to struggle within the strict and rigid Chinese education system which only values students by their scores rather than their creativity and leadership. It is a tough path.
On this episode, as both a typical and atypical example of the post-’95 generation, Gu Xi shares her experiences of building this tech community and how much she needs to fight to pursue the mission that she believes in.
Have thoughts or feedback to share? Want to join the discussion? Write to Yajun and Jingjing at [email protected].
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