The non-profit organization
Girls in Technology (CET)
published a report in which they claim that fewer and fewer women study university degrees related to Science and Technology:
only 29% of students are female
.
Furthermore, they continue to be “significantly underrepresented” in the world of work where, they say,
they do not reach 30% of the total.
CET seeks to reduce the gender gap in the technological ecosystem with a focus on Latin America and has a technology training path for young people in the region who identify with the female gender.
They have free programs and initiatives and
target young people between 13 and 23 years old
, attacking “Motivation, Initial Training, Specific Training and Future Development,” they explain.
This Friday, March 8, within the framework of International Women's Day, the collective disseminated data and pushed the achievement
"For more #WomenProtagonistsInSTEM"
to promote the training and inclusion of women in the tech world.
STEM is an acronym that stands for “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics” in English, that is, careers related to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
Here, the main conclusions of the study and what workshops and initiatives CET proposes.
Fewer women, less diversity in tech
Girls in technology.
Photo Alfredo Martínez
“CET makes the gender gap in STEM visible and presents its 2024 training path for young people from all over Latin America.
In addition, evidence is generated to understand the place that women occupy in academic and work careers in STEM.
In our latest research, "An Unequal Career", we found that there are fewer and fewer women following university courses in areas of science and technology,” she explained in dialogue with
Clarín
Paula Coto, Executive Director of Girls in Technology.
There is a problem that, far from improving, is getting worse according to the numbers.
“Women represent 29% of students studying careers related to science and technology (CET, 2022).
Likewise, the
proportion of female graduates is 40%,
with engineering, industry and construction, and information and communications technologies, ICT, being the most critical fields.
(ECLAC, 2023)”, adds Coto.
As for the world of work, the situation is not the best either.
“Jobs in STEM fields tend to pay well.
However, LinkedIn data suggests that women continue to be significantly underrepresented in the employed population in these fields, only representing 29.2% of the total (World Economic Forum, 2023).
These data show that in the scientific and technological community not all voices are represented,” continues the specialist.
Despite the advances in visualization of these problems that have occurred in recent years, the truth is that the more the industry advances, the
more the gap widens.
2As the technology industry advances, the number of women choosing STEM careers decreases.
From an early age, at a time in their lives when they decide their vocations and future professional development, young women face barriers that inhibit their interest, development and permanence in these areas.
Family and cultural stereotypes from childhood reinforce their social role and link them to humanistic areas (CET, 2021),” Coto reviews.
In this sense, for the CET collective it is essential to reverse this trend from spaces of awareness and training.
“Technology has taken a leading role in solving many of the world's challenges and even helps solve everyday problems with efficient solutions.
This is why integrating and increasing the voices of women in all their diversity in their creation and development is relevant and necessary to ensure
technological solutions aimed at all people
,” she adds.
The topic of the moment: what is happening in AI?
Gemini, Google's AI.
Photo EFE
“Women represent less than 25% of AI researchers, and only 18% lead development projects in companies in the sector (ILO, 2023).
To put it in perspective, this figure is even lower than the percentage of participation of women who work in science and technology,” warns Coto.
This represents a great difficulty for systems that are produced by a diversity problem.
“The low participation of women in these areas not only limits the diversity of perspectives in technological development, but also
deepens inequality of opportunities.
The lack of diversity in decision-making for the creation of artificial intelligence encourages the transfer of social stereotypes to the training of algorithms, reinforcing biases and increasing the risk of discriminatory or unfair decisions,” she adds.
“Likewise, it is women who experience the greatest impacts of the development of these technologies.
Studies indicate that artificial intelligence will affect the work of 80% of the active population, replacing, complementing or transitioning the forms of work (OpenAI, 2023).
The ILO warns that the effects of automation
will be especially pronounced for women
, due to their overrepresentation in administrative jobs, which are susceptible to automation,” he closes.
Initiatives to include women in the tech world usually emerge on March 8.
Various companies carry out specific campaigns and this year, in particular, the financial and crypto sector took center stage.
For example, this week Kaspersky released a survey that shows that more women are approaching digital banking services, making them the group with the highest permanent adoption of this type of transactions in the region.
Bitso, a financial services company, announced that “it is committed to ensuring that 50% of its leadership positions are occupied by women by 2025, so that there is more female representation in the world of cryptocurrencies, an industry that unites technology and finance, traditionally male sectors.”
In
cybersecurity
, a sector that has grown a lot within IT, female participation is low but growing.
According to a Tehtris report titled “Women in IT and Cybersecurity,” “women represented 10% of cybersecurity positions, while in the last year, they represented 25%, which represents a notable increase of 150% in last decade".
Beyond the numbers, the problem raised by CET aims to make visible an issue that is not yet resolved socially and that, through training, can be reversed.
To see the training proposals, click here