Kadin Yazilimci turned Turkish sexism into a 3,000-member coder network

In 2013, database administrator Gülçin Yildirim, software founder Elif Kuş and 10 other female coders met in Istanbul after seeing women treated as secretaries and pushed into less technical work. They chose to form a group rather than fight the bias alone, named it Kadin Yazilimci ("women coders"), and registered the domain so women searching the Turkish term could find them.

The problem was structural: fewer than 25% of Turkey's tech workers were women, and 70% of female IT engineers surveyed said male-dominated workplaces had hurt their careers. The group's answer was a distributed network: founders and members traveled to Anatolian towns, taught coding, ran book clubs and workshops, attended conferences and helped companies discuss inequality.

The network reached about 3,000 people on Slack. Even after Yildirim moved to Prague in 2017 and Kuş followed in 2023, Kadin Yazilimci continued in Turkey; members use the pool to hire coders, while companies also launched programs such as Borusan Holding's Let's Code, Girls and Vodafone Turkey's Women in Technology internship. The group did not control lawmakers or hiring policy, but it converted isolation into an enduring support and recruiting channel.

About 3,000 Slack members, nationwide coding talks and workshops, a hiring pool for women-founded companies, and more corporate attention to women in IT.

A named group made an invisible problem searchable: registering the domain ensured women looking for the Turkish term could find peers.

Events and workshops reached workers outside Istanbul, turning a Slack channel into a national network.

A shared talent pool let members create their own opportunities when companies' hiring practices lagged.

The founders' emigration did not end the work because the organization belonged to the network, not one office.

When workplace rules keep a minority isolated, a durable peer network can turn scattered complaints into skills, visibility and a hiring channel—even if it cannot change policy alone.

Kadin Yazilimci remained active after its founders emigrated, with its logo and message giving women a way to be coders without suppressing their feminine identity. Its founders acknowledged the limit: the group could reach workers, not lawmakers or company policy. That boundary became part of the model—a peer network that survived brain drain and kept building capability and connections inside Turkey.