Following on from last week where Samia laid down the barriers and cultural stereotypes that hinder women's participation in sciences and technology, this week she highlights the discourse in the recently colloquium in Tunisia.
The problem addressed by colloquium was as follows: Over the last two decades the number of young women adopting Sciences and Technology as fields of study has been dropping worldwide. Sciences and Technology education is the foundation for all applied engineering sciences (civil, electrical, computer, mechanical, telecoms, water, roads, power, etc.), and this type of education is a pre-requisite for further innovations and discoveries in these fields.
In particular, the ICT sector, whose growth depends on the supply of quality electrical, communications, computer and software engineers has been witnessing a double digit growth for the last 10 years. According to various projections and analysis (Sources: such as Gartner, IDC, Yankee group, Digital planet, Forrester Research) the sector will have a global turnover of $9 Trillions by 2010, around 7% of global GDP. The ICT sector employs 12-15% of the active population in OECD countries (depending how one classifies occupations) In contrast, several countries are witnessing a large gap in the supply of qualified workforce and have to import the skills from the countries that have an abundance of these (ex: India). The Information Technology Enabled Services cluster alone is a $300 Billions segment with large pent-up demand, and offering enormous employment opportunities for an educated global workforce (Source: McKinsey Global Institute). As government, local private sector and SMEs and civil society in developing countries start to “go digital”, the needs for local content and online services will keep growing and will require experts with local knowledge and global ICT skills.
Overall there is a mismatch between demand (of ICT industry and engineering fields ) and supply of qualified workforce (university, institute, tertiary education sector) based on demand today. This has to be addressed globally at the policy level, and locally, at each country level, with relevant policies, strategies and action plans. The problem of women participation in that universe is particularly acute as women do not seem to adopt such field of studies in their career because of lack of incentives, lack of role models (as illustrated in introduction), and a non-supporting environment. Even when women adopt such a carrier barriers haunt them along the way at the research, promotion, patent and career development stages. The problem is a male dominated culture that is adopted by most, including the few women who became part of that elite environment.
Finally ICTs have proven to be powerful integrative tools, linking entrepreneurs to the global supply chain and allowing a new mode of business development. Using email, electronic brochures, mailing lists and ecommerce company portals are now a prerequisite to any global activity. Women entrepreneurs, especially in our developing countries, seem to be missing on these models. They are lagging behind male entrepreneurs in adopting ICTs to run their business. The reasons are several, amongst which Lack of awareness, ICT skills, lack of financial means (broadband subscriptions are ten times more expensive on average in developing countries than in US) and lack of language skills.
This global colloquium’s overall objectives were:
- Promote academic and professional gender equality policies to globally increase women’s professional skills and participation in Sciences, ICTs and Engineering. Women’s participation in S&T and Engineering has been dropping for some countries since the 1980s, for a sector family that employs 12-18% of the active population in OECD countries.
- Discuss policies and strategies to empower women in decision-making to enable them to overcome inequity and poverty in their communities using Information and Communication Technologies as tools and enablers for the needed change.
- Brainstorm about obstacles, solutions, and good HR practices to enhance women’s participation and advancement in engineering and technological/ICT careers, and on the necessary changes needed to monitor these (indicators, who owns them, and how are these shared, used and sustained)
- Present cases where greater international collaboration and outreach in research, development, and marketing innovation has helped achieve above objectives, with a focus on implications for donors’ programs and national policies.
Audience:
Colloquium brought together attendees from the 90 member countries of the WFEO/FMOI, Colloquium participants came from academia, government, NGOs, and industry. The Colloquium also attracted practicing and collegiate women engineers and technologists, researchers in technology careers and issues relevant to women and technology worldwide, as well as advocates for women in engineering and technology and regional or local women NGOs.
The colloquium’s themes were at the intersection of several programmatic areas in public policies and private industry strategies. Background for most speakers was mixed: Public officials, donors in charge of ICT, donors in charge of Sciences & Technologies, Researchers, academicians and policy makers in Tertiary education sector, Women affairs experts, and NGOs. The problems debated, and the solutions proposed pre-supposed mobilisations of all above parties to achieve measurable progress in the medium future.
Participants discussed some ideas on mainstreaming gender aspects in rolling out ICTs in support of public sector reform efforts in developing countries. There was a lot of interest, and good ideas on how to engender future e-government and ICT-based innovation programs .. Most of these pointed to (1) proactively increasing female civil servant participation in ICTs projects from design, user specification, testing, usability and training; to (2) access to female civil servants to a PC connected to the Internet and to email as well as governmental applications and (3) , coaching, mentoring and training tailored for women civil servants; (4) a monitoring and evaluation system that allows to compare statistics on training, participation, access to a PC, access to a user account on governmental LANs etc. for both men and women public servants.
A very interesting case study of public/private partnerships to encourage young girls to adopt engineering careers came from Australia. Session analyzed the Australian government policies on education, employment and career development for women in engineering fields, characterized today by large demand and low supply. Young girls are invited to spend a few days at engineering firms (this is called shadowing and has been pioneered by the European Commission) to get a feel of the nature of the work and responsibilities. They are then advised by career councellors on the best fit for their skills and affinities and after getting into university keep a close link to industry via internships, shadowing events and dialog with recruiters and career councellors. This session was a plenary session and several participants found Australian policies best practice, and asked speaker to share the training material, advertisement campaign and general “how to” guidance to emulate the mobilization and process in their own countries policies and programs. Conference overall Conclusions and Discussion Threads.
The concluding part of Samia's series would focus on the conlusions and policy/strategy recommendations of the conference in Tunisia. In other words Whats next?
***********************************************************
Related Articles:
eGov monitor Campaign for Women In ICT
Why are so many women and girls dropping out of sciences and technology careers? - Part II
***********************************************************
Disclaimer: The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Board of executive directors of the World Bank or the governments it represents. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work"
For more information, or comments, email: smelhem@worldbank.org