Our story
Durham University Women in Tech
Why DUWiT exists, what we're building toward, and who belongs in the room.
We like solving problems. That's the actual job. So that's how we treat this one — not as a grievance to get angry about, but as a problem with a fix, the same as any other bug in the system.
Why we exist
We're not chasing equal headcount in every room. Women-dominated fields exist and work fine without a headcount campaign — that's not what this is.
DUWiT Hacks exists because too many of us were told tech feels like a boys' job, and told we could do it anyway, like that was the whole conversation. We want it to stop feeling like a boys' job and just be a job — one where ordinary medical realities aren't an inconvenient exception, and parental leave is just leave, shared, no gender attached.
We're here because the idea that gets waved off in a meeting still tends to land the second a man says it, and because "decisive" and "difficult" still describe the same behaviour depending on who's doing it.
The room keeps getting smaller: mixed classroom, then the subject where you're the only girl who picked it, then a degree course that's around one in four women nationally (and fewer at plenty of universities), then an office where hardly any of the women left hold the technical or leadership seats. Some of the best friendships in this industry start as work friendships — and when there's no one else left who looks like you, that stops happening quietly.
DUWiT Hacks is a room built to catch that early, while you're still a student — with mentors and sponsors who are actually hiring.
One Giant Leap
Edition III takes its name from the moon landing — and from Margaret Hamilton, whose code ran the guidance system that got Apollo to the moon and back. At the time, "software engineer" wasn't even a job title yet; she more or less invented it on the way.
We called 2024 Launch. This year, we land.
What to expect
Early 2027 — exact dates TBC (likely February). Team-based hackathon tracks, career workshops run by women in the roles you're aiming for, time with sponsor engineers and recruiters, and — a DUWiT tradition — a midnight donut run and bracelet making to get everyone through the small hours. Whether you're writing your first line of code or your fiftieth project, you'll leave with something built and a network that didn't exist forty-eight hours earlier.
Our track record
We launched in 2024 with a single question: could this even get off the ground? Edition II answered it — attendance jumped to 180 students, with a bigger sponsor roster, more career workshops, and a mentorship programme attendees told us actually changed their job search.
One of our proudest moments: a founding organiser came back to sponsor Edition II from her own seat at GitHub — proof that DUWiT Hacks isn't just a weekend, it's a pipeline.
Edition III is the biggest mission yet.
Who can take part
Hackathon participants must be women or non-binary people. Volunteers who help organise and run the event can be anyone — email hello@duwithacks.com if you'd like to help.