Happy International Women’s day 2018. This year the OptimalBI team are focused on celebrating the fabulous women in STEM – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; the developers, technicians, electrical engineers, data scientists, economists, scientists, doctors, architects, software engineers, and civil engineers. So many roles held by fabulous women (and men), too many to name.
We would like to encourage you to join us in celebrating the achievements of women in your own organisations whether they are interns, graduates, practitioners, managers or in supporting roles, give a woman of STEM a shout out today for her work – it will make her day or even her year.
Our International Women’s day t-shirt for 2018 features a section of code Kate was working on last week, code written and maintained by both Kate and Anastasia for their current project and we are really proud to be showcasing their work as part of our celebrations. Sadly research indicates women who code are still in the minority, while we are making progress attracting women into the digital technology industry employers, role descriptions and team culture are still maintaining the illusion coding is men’s work – we all know it’s not.
In 2017 I worked extensively on understanding the topology of the digital technology workforce here in New Zealand (see digitalskillsforum.nz for the digital skills report). We found that women make up approximately 23% of the workforce and 36% of those studying in our field. Speaking with my peers in the Engineering industry they found only ~15% of their workforce are women. Women are not the only group underrepresented in STEM careers – but it’s International Women’s day so that’s the focus of this post.
We can all do more to encourage girls and women into STEM careers – here is a handy article “Encouraging women to play the digital game” full of advice.
Today, on International Women’s Day 2018 let’s celebrate those who are here. Shout out to all of the women of STEM! congratulate them, celebrate them and help them stand up to be seen. Vic.
