Own space important for women to invest in IT

Sofia Bulgaria day 1. Representatives from across the Union have gathered to discuss how to boost digital skills, both at the top and the bottom of the EU population. The meeting takes place in the framework of Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition and present are, among others, all countries' "Digital Champions" (Sweden here represented Jan "Gulan" Gulliksen), representatives of each country's national coalition (where I represent the newly formed Swedish coalition that anyone who wants to join is welcome to register their interest), those who will organize EU code week in October and people from the European Commission, headed by the Digital Commissioner Mariya Gabriel.

We spent Monday morning in workshops, or "conversations" on a number of selected themes, including how to get more young people interested in wanting to program, how to increase teachers' skills, how to work with further education and retraining, how to get better cooperation within and between countries and not least how to get more women to want to study and work with IT.

I myself participated in the latter group, how to get more women into IT. In addition to Gulan and me, we had representatives (unfortunately only women...) from Greece, Slovakia, Austria, Malta, Estonia, Spain and Finland. The discussion was led by Cheryl Miller, founder of the Digital Leadership Institute and driving force behind the EU's Women in Digital initiative.

It is striking how the exact same problems are faced in all countries: getting girls and women interested in IT in the first place, and, once they are in IT education and professions, not feeling alienated from the environment and wanting to drop out.

One solution put forward by Cheryl Miller was to create "safe havens", i.e. separate spaces where women can develop their interest in IT on their own terms. Everyone in the discussion could emphasize that a big problem is that in mixed groups, girls and women tend to become passive, or that they are pressured into a division of roles where they have to take care of collaboration and project management while the guys do the "techy" stuff.

Separating boys and girls is controversial and meets with some resistance, but everyone agrees that it is not about discrimination but about being able to have space for both: both mixed groups and groups where girls can develop on their own terms.

Another dimension that came up in the discussion is that much more focus needs to be put on the context, and the applications that are created through IT, and not on the programming and technology itself. One example from Austria was a project on electronic knitting, an activity for girls where they learned to knit and create patterns using an IT tool. What was interesting was the application - the knitting - not the IT solution itself. The activity also attracted quite a few boys - look at that!

The results of the workshop will be compiled and discussed further. From the Swedish side, we will do some activity linked to gender equality within our national coalition during the fall. First and foremost, we will highlight all the girls' and women's initiatives that are already being done, such as Pink Programming, Datatjej and Womentor. A major problem is not only a lack of initiatives, but also a lack of awareness of the good initiatives that exist.

My contribution on Day 2 here in Sofia will be on what we should do to create natural pathways for mid-career professionals. I will report back.