Wearables startup Jewelbots wants to get girls into tech with hi-tech jewellery
The percentage of women in the tech industry isn’t just low – it’s dropping.
Wearables startup Jewelbots wants to change this by developing smart friendship bracelets to get girls interested in coding, and their idea has been a hit on the crowdfunding scene. The company, which launched last autumn, wrote about their idea on their Kickstarter:
Girls are not one dimensional. We want to show them that you can be interested in tech.. and everything else that’s fun about being a girl.
The programmable jewellery, which is completely open source, can be coded to do whatever you want, by connecting the bracelet to a mobile phone app and then diving into the code and customising it.
They program their bracelets to light up when they have a new Instagram like or let them know when their dad is on his way to pick them up.
By challenging the idea about tech not being girly, Jewelbots are hoping to turn the tide on dropping percentages of women working in the industry.
Tech giants like Apple and Google have released diversity figures showing that just two in 10 tech employees are women. And female computer science students have actually dropped by half since the eighties.
Jewelbots launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the bracelets, which has doubled its $30,000 goal in just four days, with 26 days still to go.