Workshop 1: Women in ICT Careers

1
Workshop 1 Women in ICT Careers

• Chairperson Riitta VÄNSKÄ
• Rapporteur Angele GIULIANO

2
Positive Corporate Culture", by Elisabeth
POLLITZER

• Gender Equality Hotspots
• Self-efficacy Believe in yourself
• Clarity of career opportunities
• Vocational exploration
• Positive spillover
• Diversity Policies
• Recruitment Work practices
• Industry image
• Personal Professional Development

3
"Women Returners", by Jackie Kinsey

• Values of Corporate Social Responsibility and
  Ethics, Integrity, Entrepreneurial spirit act as
  motivation
• Back to IT programme application, sharing
  personal stories, training, recruitment process
• No shortage of Women! They are just disillusioned
  or under-confident.
• The power of friends and word of mouth
• Businesses/Recruitment agencies dont always care
• Its a win-win situation for all women companies

4
"Addressing the challenges", by Gloria MILLER

• University -gt ICT Career -gt Management
• With companies Talk about the business case
• How can we keep people engaged whilst they are
  out having children
• Unintentional bias e.g. late culture of
  organisation might be a hindrance
• Sponsor Education
• Recruit Women signalling interest (girls day),
  flexibility
• Fix the organisation small wins
• Build a network commitment

5
"The Challenges and opportunities for Women in
ICT" , by Claudine SCHMUCK

• Developing country girls more attracted to ST
  than European ones.
• Technology more attractive than science
• ICT companies NEED gender diversity to win market
  shares and maintain competitive edge
• Women convince more. Ideal complementarity
• Inform, educate, recruit and promote women
• Target the professional women, top management and
  men
• Use intranets, mentoring, coaching

6
Common Areas

• Appreciation of the problem at hand
• Various approaches that can all be good according
  to culture and location
• Women can fill the demand their skills,
  numbers, passions and abilities
• Some are managing to do it lets learn from each
  others best practices

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Common Points

• Inner to outer circle of changes
• Me
• My family (older / younger generation)
• My friends (male female)
• My company / university
• My contacts (F2F but also facebook, linkedin, )
• My government
• My Europe

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Sharing Best Practices

• Promote women experts.
• Dont re-invent the wheel. Mapping of what is
  working well in different countries
• Get the media/TVs on board. Stop the
  fashion/music only trend but include in them more
  positive values promoting technology
• Make the girls the authors of the videos/other
  media channels - empowering them
• Motivate women to go for more senior roles
• Use video games to stimulate young people to get
  into science/ICT
• Start early! Involve primary education and
  parents. Maybe secondary education is too late

9
Actions for Industry

• Make internal Networks more visible
• Create synergies between companies large
  multinationals working with SMEs and vice versa.
  Create neutral fora. Use B2B networks. Develop a
  business case.
• Take ownership of the issue and do something
  about it
• Positive campaign on how technology is making
  life better... not worse
• Have clear objectives / goals employyment?
  returners
• Communicate with universities to arrange the
  curricula to form female for top ICT jobs

10
Actions for Academia

• Link up with industry, civil society and
  government networks
• Remove the stereotypes and make the Ph.Ds /
  professorships more accessible to women
• Learn more about developing countries why are
  their girls more motivated?
• Motivate the educational system to make ICTs
  fashionable
• Align curricula with industry needs
• Modernise teaching methods to reflect more the
  working patterns in ICTs
• Innovative opportunities for vocational
  exploration work with industry

11
Actions for European Commission

• Stimulate and being the platform for the sharing
  of networks.
• Ask the industry about these networks and keep a
  database
• Ensure that governments have the strategy to
  include women in ICT
• Promote that Innovations are at the heart of the
  planet
• Propose a recommendation for having more women
  board members / management in corporations
  authorities in Member States

12
Thank You !!

• Send your comments, best practices to
• INFSO-IT-GIRLS_at_ec.europa.eu