Gender diversity in tech: the post-Covid master asset

The Gender Scan survey is an international study - in partnership with UNESCO and international associations - on women in scientific and technical professions.

© https://www.genderscan.org/

Text by: Gender Scan

4 min

RFI, France 24 and Monte Carlo Doualiya publish a column, carried by several associations and personalities, in favor of gender diversity in the professions of new technologies and sciences, on the occasion of International Women's Rights Day, on which RFI dedicates a special day, this Monday March 8, on its antennas and its digital environments. 

Publicity

Read more

Do you know them ?

Katalin Kariko, Laurence Devillers, Esperanza Martinez Romero, Ritu Karidhal, or Catherine Ngila?

No ?

And yet, coming from five continents, these women are today at the origin of essential innovations.

Katalyn Kariko is the inventor of messenger RNA technology used in vaccines against Coronavirus-19.

Laurence Devillers is a pioneer of ethical artificial intelligence, a decisive issue for the respect of our rights, freedoms and democracies in the digital age.

Esperanza Martinez Romeo has developed bacteria that increase productivity in agriculture while respecting the environment.

Thanks to Ritu Karidhal India is the 4th country to have successfully piloted an exploration mission to Mars.

And Catherine Ngila puts nanotechnologies at the service of the analysis and elimination of pollutants in water, a decisive technology for the management of water resources in the world.

The list is long of these often unrecognized women.

And yet they are there!

At the front!

Each of them contributes to a vital struggle for all of us.

But the obstacles to overcome in order to achieve this are innumerable.

From school, they have to face the stereotypes according to which girls are less gifted than boys at math, whereas scientific work clearly shows it: this is false!

Result?

Fewer women in scientific and technical studies, where they represent 34% of graduates worldwide (1).

This fall then worsens in the labor market, in particular because of sexism.

Today, women represent only 28% of scientists and engineers abroad (2).

For 5 years in partnership with a growing number of associations and organizations

Gender Scan

(3) highlights the persistent obstacles, but also the first successes (4)!

There is an urgent need to stop depriving ourselves of the skills of half of humanity, even as the seriousness of the challenges increases.

It is urgent to take action.

Gender Scan, with a collective of several hundred organizations and associations around the world and ECLS (5) in France, suggests a first simple measure to governments: officially publish each year a national ranking of scientific and technical training, according to the proportion of female students graduating.

Counting is essential.

Scientists know it well, decision-makers in the public and private sectors too.

Such a measure would make it possible to assess the capacity of university training in science and technology to attract and train the women needed by research and businesses.

It would make it possible to identify and initiate the necessary corrective measures.

(1) Source: Unesco, Gender Scan analysis.

(2) Source: World Labor Organization, Gender Scan analysis.

(3) Gender Scan, landmark study on gender diversity in STEM, see global data published in

Women in STEM disciplines, Springer

, 2017.

(4) First positive impact of professional equality policies in large tech groups, with a 20% increase in employees satisfied with the organization of work and career management (source: Gender Scan 2019 )

(5) ECLS: Together against Sexism.

Newsletter

Receive all international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

  • Tribune

  • Womens rights

  • International women's rights day

  • Women