General Electric, Google, eBay, and Twitter are joining Girls Who Code, an initiative started by Reshma Saujani that is designed to promote computer science study amongst women in high school. The program will kick off this summer with an eight-week session in New York, during which 20 female high school students will be paired with a mentor from a tech company, and attend workshop sessions on coding, design, and entrepreneurship. According to Girls Who Code, while women earn 57 percent of the bachelor's degrees awarded in the United States, just 14 percent of computer science degrees go to women — and less than 10 percent of venture capital-backed companies have been founded by women.

In a post on Twitter's blog, engineer Sara Haider writes that the program hopes to "empower young women and provide them with the skills and resources necessary to pursue a career in engineering and technology." Twitter hopes to hire graduates of the program in the coming years, while Girls Who Code plans to roll out mentorship programs in additional cities in 2013.