Women’s representativity was a real success on Vivatech, in Paris this year 2017. It was the same situation during the OECD Forum in Paris 8th June. I was wondering wetherwe can speak about Viva women in technology sector?
My 2 daughters are 3 and 5 today, I hope they will be able to follow their dreams whatever they want to do. My feeling is that being able to write a code will have more impact than being able to speak 10 languages in the near future. Should I already start to train, teach them? warn them?
VIVATECH
If 35 to 40% of speakers were women during the three days of Vivatech in Paris, we can highlight the fact that only 12% of them are representing digital world in reality.
Conference on Gender equality with QFDN association: « Quelques Femmes du Numérique » presented by Marie-Anne Magnac, Cocreator of QFDN
If i told you there were less girls tant boys in tech school, you would not be surprised, but figures are showing the biggest gap ever: 10 girls out of 500 students were studying at Epitech in 2015.
QFDN is an association focusing on gender equality. One of its member told us all barriers she had to overcome to pursue with her dream to work in digital. She decided to move forward and created E-MMA to promote gender equality in IT fields. 200 ambassadeurs of E-MMA today are pushing girls to follow technical studies in France. Its role is to support parents and train children. There is so much to do, could we dream about a world with gender equality in technological and digital world?
OECD FORUM
Conference on « Pink colar, Blue colar » at OECD week on the 6th of June:
Why would a bot speak in terms of he or she? Should we leave our new digital world in Mens’ hands?
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Princess Mary of Danemark set the scene:
« The session aims at understanding solutions to help women to fulfill their dreams and use all their potentials.
We have a « global agenda » that includes women development. There is no easy solutions. We have to have a greatest focus on social norms : they influence women’s choices. They relfect disrcreminatring gender stereotypes. How we can challenge this mentality? look at Sheryl Sandberg quote (COO Facebook) :
« Next time you are about to call a little girl bossy, say instead she has leadership skills. »
Unconscious gender bias of leaders is the biggest barriers in women achieving success. We have to become more conscious. It is about the freedom of choice.
Diversity brings business solutions. Researches proove it : Mc Kensey gender diverse companies outperform others financially by 15%. Can we create new structures that are able to include both pink and blue colars? »
To create the change, Danemark is a good place to look at. The principle going back to childhood is « You can’ be what you can’t see ». They encourage girls to play football at school.
=> It is that kind of sentence that rings a bell to me. I also plaid football until I was a grown up, and I even organized football games when I started to work from 23 to 27 years old. Girls at football is very fun and I encourage those who are reading this to try.
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Chiarra Chorazzi, MD Women’s Forum
Chiara Corazza, Women’s forum Managing Director, says she can’t find enough women leaders involved in the digital world.
« The role of the society has changed. 50 years ago we did not have toys, we had to create them. Early 60s: the woman should be self controlled, not speaking loud, modest…the model of Princess Sissi. For those who don’t know please have a look. More diversity was find in the classrooms.
We could not play football when we were young.You have to Be where you have to be. »
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TOCA POCA
CEO Björn Jeffery told us they make products being gender neutral.
They go as far as making sure girls characters are as strong as boys characters. This app on Toca hair salon allows boy to do somebody’s hairs without feeling bad. Same with a car game, with no boys’ information that would prevent girls from going on the app. There is a big market potential with 150 millions downloads in 100 countries since its creation in 2010. The company is growing rapidly.
I look forward to see it in French version to try it with my children.
There is no pink or blu app store: Digital is an opportunity to create games gender-neutral.
Events are becoming bigger and bigger around on Gender in technology.
This event in november: European Woman in Technology in Amsterdam, which was a great success last year in november 2017, or the Women in Technology International: Key leaders in science & technology are rewarded of their work.
The number of women in science and engineering is growing, yet men continue to outnumber women, especially at the upper levels of these professions. In elementary, middle, and high school, girls and boys take math and science courses in roughly equal numbers, and about as many girls as boys leave high school prepared to pursue science and engineering majors in college. Yet fewer women than men pursue these majors.
Among first-year college students, women are much less likely than men to say that they intend to major in science, technology, engineering, or math. By graduation, men outnumber women in nearly every science and engineering field, and in some, such as physics, engineering, and computer science, the difference is dramatic, with women earning only 20 percent of bachelor’s degrees. Women’s representation in science and engineering declines further at the graduate level and yet again in the transition to the workplace. As mentioned in this article from American Association of University Women, Catherine Hill
WEST : Woman in the Entreprise of Science and Technology: Boston based WEST helps women in science, technology, and engineering advance their careers. Our members are committed to developing themselves as leaders through learning, networking, and sharing.
Hundreds of initiatives like thoses above are ongoing and it seems hard to understand where to go when you want to talk about this.
In this article from Jane Artisson in the Women’s blog, she found the right words for telling what happened in the coding world:
1 Girls don’t code. And when they do, they tend to come to it by a roundabout route.
2 Coding is the future
3 Coding is too important to be left to half the population
4 Both women and men want apps to control their children
5 Everybody also wants to understand or impress the growing number of developers they work with
6 Most developers are self-taught but the rest of us need really good teachers
7 When it doubt, Google it
Sources:
ERIC article = https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED509653. American Association of University Women, Catherine Hill
WOMENS’Blog= https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1a_ICTEleGZ3R7xILdFrvVVzFjq1lW_9DChjymgGn7O8/edit#slide=id.g1e12aac25f_0_58