There’s an unattributed quote that often does the rounds amongst the boys’ clubs of the internet – the kind you might find on a t-shirt, in comic sans. It goes, “I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code”, and it’s a statement which, in 2015, registers something of the stark gender divide in Stem subjects – science, technology, engineering, and maths – that is preventing girls from effecting change across the globe. The facts are shocking even while the reality is felt in workplaces everywhere: just 14 per cent of the UK’s tech industry is female, and both Apple and arch-rival Google revealed last year that 70 per cent of their global workforces were male. It wasn’t always this way – before plummeting in 1984, the number of women in computer sciences in the US was actually growing.

One person who knows the source code better than most is Robyn. As reported in Dazed last month, the Swedish pop singer and champion of robots is launching Tekla festival – a one-day festival for 11-18-year-old girls, in partnership with the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Taking place this Saturday (April 18), the festival promises workshops on game design, robot programming and 3D visualisations, topped off with a performance from the fembot songstress herself, of course. As Robyn said in a statement, Tekla is inspired by KTH’s motto, ‘Science and Art’: “(I) wanted to do something to inspire girls who are curious about technology, while at the same time highlighting (the fact) that too few women are applying to KTH programmes.”

“Just 14 per cent of the UK’s tech industry is female... It wasn’t always this way – before plummeting in 1984, the number of women in computer sciences in the US was actually growing”

Tekla is the latest in a string of festivals and events around the world designed to encourage girls to get into science and technology. But do girls-only festivals really hold the answer to the industry’s debilitating gender gap? Or do they risk stating that gap more strongly?

The new crop of girls-only Stem schemes range from government-funded initiatives with badly designed websites, to the more exciting festivals and organisations that have fourth-wave feminism as their driving force. On International Women’s Day (March 8), the Southbank Centre hosted the annual Women of the World (WoW) festival. There, Everyday Sexism founder Laura Bates told the story of her project, while the more technologically inclined could see Nicola Mendelsohn (the head of Facebook for Africa and the Middle East) discussing women in tech. International Womens Day weekend also saw Wikipedia edit-a-thons from Art+Feminism groups around the world (Dazed spoke to the organisers about Wikipedia’s gender bias ahead of the event).

But the mission to achieve gender parity in the industry isn’t (and shouldn’t be) limited to one-day events. In New York, Girls Who Code is a year-round movement that aims to provide computer science education and exposure to one million young women by 2020, allowing girls from poorer backgrounds to learn to code, and meet inspiring female tech leaders in the process. For founder Reshma Saujani, teaching young women to code is “the domestic issue of our time”.

“Women comprise the majority of the workforce, but they hold just 25 per cent of the jobs in Stem-related fields, particularly in computing and technical industries,” she told us over email. “Having girls be discouraged or, worse, left behind altogether from pursuing Stem-related interests will have irreparable consequences for our society.”

For campaigners like Saujani, girls-only tech festivals like Robyn’s are a key way of combatting the Stem gender gap. More than just speakers and workshops, they offer an environment of inclusivity where girls can discover the benefits of science and tech knowhow away from the pressures of school or work. “I tip my hat to Robyn,” she says. “Creating an environment where girls don’t feel pressured by the male dominance usually surrounding them empowers them to own their own ideas and (have) confidence.”

While the number of girls-only Stem initiatives are on the rise, one wonders whether such events might inadvertently state the gender gap more strongly by separating the girls from the boys. Is the exclusion of males really necessary for the creation of sisterhood? In the end, it comes down to giving girls the chance to have their voice heard in a secure environment – and one, as Saujani puts it, that is deliberately miles away from the stereotype of “geeky guys locked in dark basements”. By giving girls the chance to collaborate on their own terms, they can change the culture around them. Many have suggested, for example, that the omission of women’s menstrual cycles from Apple’s much-anticipated health tracker would not have happened had women been involved in its design.

At Tekla this Saturday, Robyn hopes her festival will bring girls to the front of a boys’ world. While groups hoping to advance female leadership in tech are on the up – Geekettes, Geek Girl Meetup and Stemettes are other organisations all worth checking out ­­– the Swedish singer is surely the coolest advocate yet. Rather than emphasising the gender divide by marking out girls from the boys, these festivals and campaigns provide a way to ‘do’ science, tech or maths without the pressure that claiming your allegiance to any of these areas usually connotes. Girls want to change the world as much as boys (duh) – isn’t it time we gave them the source code?

Robyn and KTH’s Tekla festival takes place this Saturday April 18 in Stockholm. Girls Who Code’s Summer Immersion Program takes place across 14 cities in the US this summer