The situation of Polish women in the new technology industry is best described by a statement by the President of the Office of Electronic Communications, Magdalena Gaj: "[…] we have a problem with stereotypes. We have a problem with girls not wanting to study at technical universities, for example, in majors such as computer science, telecommunications, electronics."

The topic of gender and the associated social roles is a subject that is currently being intensely debated by the Polish society. Poles are still more prone to attribute interest in new technologies to boys, perceiving girls as no match for computers and robots. No wonder that most female programmers leave the profession while still in kindergarten.

Consequently, among students of new technologies at Polish universities in 2015, women represented 15% of students and 5 years later this percentage increased by only 1%. And this figure still holds true.

To address girls before the world convinces them that they are not as smart as boys, we decided to use what is closest to them - fairy tales!

We chose four classic fairy tales whose main characters are women, and then updated them. Keeping the formula of the original, we introduced new technologies into the stories with the help of which the protagonists handle adversities on their own, without the help of princes or fairies. This demonstrates that princesses can also code and build robots, and that they don't always dream of going to the ball. Sometimes they dream of studying at a technical university.

Because as Marian Wright Edelman once said: "You can't be what you can't see."

There are numerous initiatives that aim at eliminating underrepresentation of women in IT in Poland. They support high school/college female students or women already working in the IT industry. We knew that to make a difference, we had to dig deeper and get to the root of the issue. What everyone seemed to be missing is the fact that the stereotypes attributing greater ability in engineering and programming to men are shaped already in kindergartens. Women face not only internal conflict as a result of growing up with these beliefs, but also the toxicity of a highly masculinized IT environment.

Changing the situation of women in IT starts with changing the way kindergarten girls & boys perceive it. We asked the IT Girls Foundation, dedicated to igniting a love of IT in girls, to support our efforts.

The cornerstone of the project was the series of workshops for children, lesson scenarios for caregivers and the book "Fairytales Updated". Written together with engineers from Intel, the book included rewritten classics: Cinderella the programmer, Hansel and Gretel the hacker, Rapunzel the engineer, and Snow White the constructor.

We launched the project with the press conference and publication of an animated spot, narrated by project ambassador - activist Janina Daily. Using a fairy tale-like narrative, it described the problem and encouraged people to visit the project website where all the materials were available to download ("Fairytales Updated" in PDF and audiobook format, lesson scenarios, worksheets and coloring sheets). Kindergartens were also offered registering for children's workshops conducted by the foundation and Intel engineers.

Throughout two months of launch phase of the project, workshops in 12 kindergarten groups were ran in Gdansk and Warsaw.

The information about the initiative reached over 19M UUs; educational materials were downloaded by more than 3,000 kindergarten teachers and parents; over 400 kindergartens signed up for the workshops. “Fairytales Updated” was read by over 28 000 children. The news about the project was disseminated by television, radio, dailies, online outlets and influencers. Even the capital's Veturilo city bikes provided their advertising space for free. Quite a result for a two-months’ long launch campaign with almost no paid media support!

This is just the begining. IT Girls Foundation sells a printed version of "Fairytales Updated" and the revenues will be used to support their continued efforts. The workshops are further conducted by the foundation with the support of Intel engineers. Thus, everyday more kindergarten girls learn that they can turn their imagination into reality with coding, programming or engingeering. Sometimes small updates bring major changes, don’t they?