To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the International Girls in ICT Day, created by the International Telecommunications Union, the Girls in ICT Week was launched, within the scope of the Engineers for a Day Project, between the 22nd and 29th of April. Several online activities will be promoted to share knowledge, experiences and clarify doubts, involving the partner entities of the project and higher education institutions.
The week starts with the webinar “International Girls in ICT Day: Talks about Technology”, at 3 pm, on April 22, held by Secretary of State for Citizenship and Equality (SECI), Rosa Monteiro, for InCoDe.2030, by Comissão para a Cidadania e a Igualdade de Género (CIG) and by .PT, with the Minister of Science, Technology and Education Superior, Manuel Heitor, at the closing. This will also be the first initiative of the Portugal Digital Forum, which will continue from May 3 to 6.
In this webinar, we will have the opportunity to get to know, first hand, the work of eight women working in ICT areas (from CDI Portugal, Microsoft, University of Aveiro, IBM, Sensei, Kirchhoff Automotive, DefinedCrowd, and Escola 42), who are role models for the youth. The broadcast will be live on www.forumportugaldigital.pt and on the CIG Facebook page.
Girls in ICT Week is part of the Government’s objective of reversing the trend of reducing the participation of girls and women in ICT and engineering. Through the area of citizenship and equality, the Government has sought to place this issue on the political and media agenda, alerting, for example, to the drop in the percentage of women among people with ICT degrees – from 26% in 1999 to 17, 5% in 2009, recovering slightly to 21% in 2019. The aim is to improve these indicators, as well as those relating to the labor market.
It was this goal that, in 2017, led to the creation of the “Engineers for a day” Project, which has already reached almost 10 thousand young people from basic and secondary education, in 460 activities, including laboratory practices, role model sessions and mentoring. An initiative of SECI, it is coordinated by CIG, in articulation with Carta Portuguesa para a Diversidade (APPDI), (APPDI), Instituto Superior Técnico and Ordem dos Engenheiros, currently involving a network of 58 partner entities where technological companies such as IBM, DefinedCrowd, Microsoft, Sensei and Siemens, 26 elementary and secondary schools and 13 higher education institutions.
The project is now integrated into the Action Plan for the Digital Transition, together with InCoDe.2030.
More information here.