WS #166 Breaking Barriers: Empowering Women in Internet Network

Summary

This panel discussion focused on addressing the gender gap in technology-related fields, particularly in network engineering and cybersecurity. Participants from various countries shared insights on challenges women face in tech and potential solutions. Key issues highlighted included cultural barriers, lack of role models, and workplace discrimination. The importance of education and early exposure to STEM fields for girls was emphasized, along with the need for mentorship programs and supportive policies.

Speakers stressed the significance of having women in decision-making roles when creating policies affecting them. They discussed the need for flexible work arrangements, childcare support, and addressing unconscious biases in the workplace. The concept of “diversity by design” was proposed, suggesting intentional inclusion of women in tech programs and initiatives.

The discussion touched on the varying contexts of women’s rights and opportunities across different countries, acknowledging that progress is uneven globally. Participants emphasized the role of both government policies and industry partnerships in promoting gender diversity in tech. Suggestions included offering incentives for companies employing women in tech roles, creating repositories of opportunities for women, and evaluating the success of existing programs.

The importance of male allies in supporting women’s advancement was noted. Speakers also highlighted the transformative potential of the internet in empowering women, especially those with limited mobility or in conservative societies. The discussion concluded with a call for systemic changes and continued advocacy to achieve gender equity in the tech industry.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The underrepresentation of women in tech fields, especially in leadership roles

– Cultural and societal barriers that prevent women from pursuing STEM careers

– The need for mentorship, role models, and support systems for women in tech

– Policy changes and initiatives needed to increase gender diversity in tech

– The importance of creating inclusive and equitable work environments for women

The overall purpose of the discussion was to examine the gender gap in technology fields, particularly in areas like cybersecurity and network engineering, and to explore ways to increase women’s participation and advancement in these areas. The panelists shared experiences and perspectives from different countries and contexts to highlight challenges and potential solutions.

The tone of the discussion was passionate and candid, with speakers openly sharing personal experiences and frustrations with gender inequality. There was a sense of urgency in addressing these issues, but also optimism about the potential for change. The tone became more action-oriented towards the end, with panelists proposing specific initiatives and policy recommendations.

Speakers

– Sonal Zaveri: Moderator

– Amrita Choudhury: Director of SIGCHIAU, Chair of Asia-Pacific Regional IGF, Chair of IGF Support Association, Chair of APRALO at ICANN, President of ISOC Delhi

– Joyce Chen: APANIC’s Senior Advisor for Strategic Engagement

– Arinola Akinyemi: CEO of Omar Ventures and Digisphere Limited

– Ekaterine Imedadze: Commissioner of Georgian National Communication Commission (ComCom)

– Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky: Technical support engineer at Dell Technologies

– Lima Madomi: Research and teaching assistant at the University of Geneva

Additional speakers:

– Gulalai Khan: Lecturer at LAMS university, teaches internet governance and tech policy

– Harisa Shahid: Associate Information Security Engineer at Strategic Systems International

– Audience members (unnamed)

Gender Gap in Technology: Challenges and Solutions

This panel discussion, moderated by Sonal Zaveri, brought together experts from various countries to address the persistent gender gap in technology-related fields, with a particular focus on network engineering and cybersecurity. Zaveri opened by highlighting stark statistics: women represent only 19% of entry-level positions and 10% of executive-level positions in tech.

Speakers and Their Contributions:

1. Joyce Chen (Taiwan): Emphasized the importance of role models and mentorship, introducing the concept of “diversity by design.” She highlighted the ITU Network of Women initiative and stressed the need for safety and personal security in creating inclusive environments.

2. Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky (Egypt): Discussed cultural barriers in conservative societies and the lack of female representation at tech events in Egypt. She introduced the Digital Egypt generations program and advocated for flexible work policies.

3. Arinola Akinyemi (Nigeria): Addressed workplace discrimination and harassment, proposing incentives for companies that employ and promote women in tech roles.

4. Amrita Choudhury (India): Focused on work-life balance challenges and the importance of women’s participation in policy-making.

5. Lima Madomi (Malaysia): Highlighted barriers to accessing education and opportunities in developing countries. She emphasized the need to evaluate the success metrics of programs supporting women in tech.

6. Ekaterine Imedadze (Georgia): Stressed the importance of targeted training programs and addressing the digital divide in developing countries.

Key Challenges:

1. Cultural and societal barriers, particularly in conservative countries

2. Lack of role models and mentorship

3. Work-life balance issues

4. Discrimination and harassment in the workplace

5. Limited access to education and opportunities

6. Digital divide in developing countries

Proposed Solutions and Strategies:

Education and Training:

– Specialized training programs for women in tech fields

– Digital literacy initiatives

– Leveraging online learning to overcome physical and cultural barriers

Workplace Policies:

– Flexible work arrangements and parental leave

– Creating inclusive work environments

– Addressing discrimination through targeted policies and training

Government and Industry Initiatives:

– Government-industry partnerships to drive change

– Incentives for diverse hiring practices

– Ensuring women’s participation in policy-making

– Promoting multidisciplinary expertise in tech fields

Empowering Women Through Technology:

– Using the internet as an educational tool

– Addressing the digital divide

– Supporting women-led online networks and communities

Challenges in Conservative Countries:

The discussion highlighted unique challenges faced by women in conservative societies, including internalized biases and societal pressures that shape women’s choices. An audience member from Afghanistan shared personal experiences, emphasizing the need for tailored solutions in different cultural contexts.

Government Policies and Industry Partnerships:

Speakers agreed on the importance of collaboration between government agencies and private sector companies. They emphasized the need for policies that address both personal empowerment and systemic barriers, recognizing the complexity of achieving gender equity in tech.

Call to Action:

Amrita Choudhury concluded with a powerful call for systemic changes and continued advocacy. The panel emphasized the importance of moving beyond equality to focus on equity, as highlighted by Arinola and reinforced by Sonal Zaveri.

The session ended with a photo opportunity, capturing the diverse group of experts who contributed to this important discussion. Rapporteurs Harisa and Gulalai were acknowledged for their role in documenting the session.

In conclusion, the panel recognized that addressing the gender gap in technology requires multifaceted approaches tailored to different cultural and regional contexts. The discussion underscored the need for ongoing efforts to empower women, create inclusive environments, and drive systemic change in the tech industry.

Sonal Zaveri: social norms that influence both the study and the career choices. The other problem is that there is a definite talent shortage in the workforce. And when women do make it to the tech workforce, and not all women who have studied in STEM make it to that tech workforce, there is a skewed representation with only 19 percent, 19 percent at entry-level positions and mid-level and only 10 percent in executive level positions. And these numbers become smaller if we look at some of the specializations. So the network engineering field, for example, the women in network engineering has increased from only 8 percent in 2014 to 14 percent in 2020. Fact number two, companies with diverse, gender diverse teams outperform by 15 percent when compared to those without gender diversity. And we have research that backs this up. So it’s not just about reducing the gender gap, but there are tangible economic benefits of being gender friendly. And it brings innovation, it brings creativity, and we are ensured that the diverse end-user demographics are considered in network solutions. Fact number three, I don’t want to confuse inclusion and gender. Gender itself is a very complex issue and it intersects with disability and other vulnerable groups. So we really need to move from tokenistic participation to more meaningful ones. And let’s never ever forget that gender rights are human rights and the internet empowers human rights. So unless we increase the supply and demand generation, to promote change and encourage a positive deviance in the industry, we need to address the male-dominated norms. Fact number four, women in the tech industry, including those in cyber security, DNS and network engineers, have shattered stereotypes in a male-dominated field. And testimony to that is this panel of extremely experienced women who are going to speak to us about some of the challenges that they have overcome and how they are transforming the industry. So I’m going to quickly introduce my esteemed panel, an all-woman panel. Amrita Choudhury, and she’s sitting here to the right of me. She’s an active member and contributor at national, regional and global internet governance platforms. I think everybody knows Amrita. She’s always being hailed as we walk down the corridors. She serves as the Director of SIGCHIAU, Chair of Asia-Pacific Regional IGF, Chair of IGF Support Association, Chair of APRALO at ICANN, and the President of ISOC Delhi. We have Joyce, who is online. And Joyce is APANIC’s Senior Advisor for Strategic Engagement. She’s responsible for managing key relationships with stakeholders such as governments, intergovernmental organizations and the wider Asia-Pacific internet community. May I add that the APANIC Foundation has worked extensively in gender empowerment. They also have a program called the SWITCH program, which provides a mentorship and capacity-building program for women engineers and lawyers across the… six economies of the Asia-Pacific. And as our hashtag goes, action not words, that’s what APNIC Foundation does. We have Arinola, who is online as well. Unfortunately she couldn’t make it to the IGF, but we welcome you online for this session. She is the CEO of Omar Ventures and Digisphere Limited, and she’s based in Nigeria. She’s a visionary entrepreneur and a seasoned tech leader with over 29 years of experience in the IT industry, driving digital inclusion, empowerment, and innovation, especially in Africa. We are very proud to also have Ekaterina Imidadze, and I hope I pronounced that correctly, and she’s the Commissioner of Georgia, Georgian National Communication Commission, called ComCom, and since March 2021. And she brings 13 years of professional experience in the telecom sector, including leadership roles in international companies. We have to the left of me, Noha. She is a technical support engineer, high-end storage, one Dell Technologies, and a very distinguished engineer in her own right. Online we have Lima Madoni. She’s the research and teaching assistant at the University of Geneva. Thank you very much, Lima, to have come online. A special thanks to Joyce, who is up, I think, in the middle of the night in Australia. And thank you, Arinola, for joining from Nigeria. So the way we are going to do this session is we are going to have a set of policy level questions, and we are going to learn from our esteemed panelists. I will be posing the question to three of the panelists, the second question again to the next three, and the third one will be open to all. And in between I will pause because we have two very special people here who is going to help us with the reportering. That’s Harisa over here to the left of me and Gulalai who is a lecturer at LAMS which is a renowned university and she teaches internet governance and tech policy. And Harisa is the Associate Information Security Engineer Strategic Systems International. So thank you very much for being present here today. So I’m going to start with a general question and this is going to be addressed to first Joyce, then Noha, and then Ekaterina. The first question is how can policymakers support initiatives that aim to increase gender diversity and inclusion in network management as well as operational and infrastructure development roles? So to you Joyce, from your experience, can you share why gender is important in the technical and operational roles and in infrastructure development? And how do you see that link between gender, human rights, and the technical standards that we produce? Also remembering that the technical operational roles is a bit of a boys club and so how can we include gender in these roles? Over to you Joyce.

Joyce Chen: Thanks very much Sonal and thank you so much for the very flattering introduction. I’m coming to you indeed from Australia. It’s quite late in the night but I’m very happy to be here with you even if it is from online. I think three major points that I wanted to bring up to respond to your question, the first one. I think first, of course, is to highlight the importance of supporting access to the internet. It seems sort of very obvious, the internet ultimately empowers people in many, many ways. So whether it’s upskilling, career development, supporting freedom of expression as a basic human right, everything. So first of all, it’s to talk about access. And freedom to access this thing that we call the internet. My second point is that policymakers can do more to promote role models. I think over the years, we’ve seen more women taking on STEM-related jobs, becoming network engineers or engineers in general, et cetera. But I think the reality remains that many, many women who are in these fields and who have worked many years to be in these fields still find themselves in support roles or service roles. They’re not in decision-making roles. And as you said, Sonal, it’s really hard to break into the boys’ club, particularly in technical fields. There are lots of reasons for it, whether it’s physical requirements, whether it’s just being plain excluded by colleagues, et cetera, there are many reasons why this is happening. It’s also not always a very welcoming environment, I think, for women, just because. It’s quite easy, I think, to say, well, okay, there are more women now at the table than before. Yes, thank you. But being inclusive does not necessarily predicate being included. They’re quite different, being inclusive versus actually being included. And I think that the boys’ club exists at every level of the hierarchy. So, my point is we need to do more to promote our role models, and what this means also is being confident to step up as a role model. When I question why there are not more women or many women in executive positions such as board members, the most common refrain or answer that I hear is, well, no woman applied, nobody nominated themselves for the role, and so they were all male. I think there already exists a problem of women not wanting to put themselves forward is the first thing, for various reasons, but also that even if there were such positions, it’s very hard for women to take them on board. My third point, and my last point for now, is that I think to be in policy and in decision-making roles, there needs to be more support for multidisciplinary expertise and skills. When we’re in internet governance spheres, we often talk about multi-stakeholderism, but I don’t think that we talk enough about multidisciplinary. Each stakeholder group is not meant to embody only a specific set of skills, so governments don’t just govern, the technical community doesn’t just tech, and it seems blatantly obvious, but sometimes, even when we are operating in a multi-stakeholder environment such as in the IGF, we still tend to pigeonhole ourselves, when I think we really should aim to reach across the aisles. Practicing multi-stakeholderism requires multidisciplinary skills, expertise, knowledge, and going back to your question, Sonal, the same is true that policymakers, I think, should require initiatives to be multidisciplinary by design. I’ll stop here, and I’ll leave the time for the others to respond as well.

Sonal Zaveri: Thanks a lot, Joyce. You’ve given us a lot of points to think about. I think about what you’ve said that, you know, what is the difference between inclusion and being included? There is a huge gap. There’s a gap in what women can do for themselves, but there is a lot that can be done also to create an enabling environment so that women can thrive for the various challenges that they face. So, I’m going to now turn to Noha on my left. Noha comes from Egypt and in your country, are there initiatives to encourage and build capacity and help women to build their careers and increase their skills, such as, you know, upgrading skills as the industry is evolving continuously? Over to you.

Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky: Thank you, Sonal, and I wanted to echo everything that Joyce said. So, I thought that we in Egypt are in a very good shape when it comes to gender balance in tech until I was representing my company Dell at a very big tech event, the biggest one in Cairo. It’s called Cairo ICT, where each, like, tech company has a booth and has representatives, and all the representatives were men. So, I was, like, shocked. Why? Because these men, they talk to the decision-makers in companies and make deals with them. But I guess in Egypt we have many culture barriers we’re tackling that filter, like the filtration you mentioned at the beginning of your speech when you said, like, women tend to study humanitarian fields rather than studying tech or STEM fields. So, yeah, we were told that you’re smarter in history rather than math or science. STEM fields are very demanding, so you’ll not be able to balance home, and work. You will not be able to take managerial levels or tasks. So, yeah, we need more women to represent us, to be our role models. We tend to, like, be intimidated to talk about our achievements and what we did, and to even share our experience with other women. But I guess I work in a corporate, and we have, like, initiatives to include more women in managerial levels, and even mentor college students to join the STEM fields. These days, it’s not necessary to study tech, to come from a tech background, to work in You can still study at any time of your, like, career time, and join the tech field. I’ve seen women from a low background who are, like, programmers now, and they shifted to other career paths. So, in Egypt, we have, like, very good governmental initiative called the digital Egypt generations, where, like, they divided the age groups, so digital Egypt cubs, digital Egypt youth, digital Egypt pioneers, and they offer tech courses in different fields for the different age groups. They also offer mentorship, and soft skills courses, and they introduce freelancing to the trainees, and they aim to train thousands of citizens from the different age groups, and this contributed in a very good way in the job finding, because we have, like, many big tech companies investing in Egypt, because I believe we have a very good range of skill sets. So, yeah, it was a very good way to equip the different age groups with the needed digital skills. Back to you.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you very much for that, Noho. And I guess in every country there are initiatives in order to encourage more women to enter the tech force. And Joyce was talking about role models. I guess you are one in Egypt yourself. I’m going to now move to Ekaterina. And from your perspective on regulatory strategies and advancing connectivity in diverse contexts, what is it that you feel is absolutely critical that we must do?

Ekaterine Imedadze: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure being here. It’s a pleasure to discuss the topics related to gender equality and diversity for everybody in a quite broad context, I think, as you’ve opened this panel. And also, once I’ve mentioned that I hope very soon we will have time that there will not be need for women-specific or diversity-specific discussions, because it will become normal for everybody to be, the world to be balanced in that way. So to answer your question, I think that I will echo Joyce’s first topic. The most important, I believe, you would agree, for policymakers, for regulators, is ensuring the access and skills that are there. So there is no gap in providing digital infrastructure, digital enablers, devices. There is no gap. And there is no gap in skills of using those digital services. there should be similar opportunities for all the gender groups or diverse population groups. So this is first thing that we take care of, and in case of COMCOM, as we have, we are supporting infrastructural projects, for example in Georgia, which delivers the fiber optic to different regions of Georgia, and our supporting program is bringing the media literacy to the villages where the internet will be brought, and specific focus on top of the general trainings, there is specific gender-specific, and also for people with disabilities, there are specific trainings provided. It’s always needed, and you need to pay more, invest more resources. This is the first layer we need to do. Another layer, we think it’s important, is collaboration with different organizations, donor organizations, educational organizations, because if we speak about them, about them, the quality in the society, it starts from education. So different memorandums, or collaborations with universities, also with high schools, and where you can speak and encourage, just speak about telecommunications, digital, and tell them how important now, how big the area, where can they can grow up as an expert, and that there are equal opportunities, especially bringing role models, as it has been mentioned, and for example, if I can go and speak about what was the path for me, starting from some technology education, and still it was very difficult to get to the, to break this glass ceiling, as we call, right? Because, on the one hand side, in the universities you can find in Georgia almost 50-50 gender distribution between male and female. But somehow we see that around 20% on managerial position then. What happens in between from graduating university, why it is so difficult for women to speak about it, what were the barriers, what were the lessons learned. And I think that for the second question I will have more time to speak about the mentorship programs. And I try to be transparent. So I think that for women it’s also, especially on senior positions, it’s a special responsibility to be a role model or speak more about the challenges on your path or on your career path. And this is somehow we need to take this responsibility to be more vocal, more visible, and play somewhere mentors, somewhere mentees, being mentees or changing roles. So I think this kind of opportunities are also very important for us. So I would say that there is no one specific solution to this problem, but we need to act as diverse way as possible.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences from Georgia. And what I took away from what you said was that you have to invest resources. And yes, you require financial resources, but human resources to go out there, to encourage, to talk about personal challenges. And so we have to make it more personal and to encourage women to not only get into STEM, but also to move into more decision-making roles. And absolutely, it’s a different way of trying to ensure that women enter the workforce. And we have to make it as personal as possible. So I’m going to pause here and come to Gulalai. Any comments or questions from the online community?

Audience: One question on Maureen asking for advice for completely inexperienced women if they want to move to network, you know, engineering. What’s the advice from all of you for them?

Sonal Zaveri: Okay. Please go ahead, Noa.

Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky: Thank you for the question. So there are many basic courses to start with. They are offered by many big companies, big vendors. I don’t want to mention any, but you can just Google, like, basic network courses to, like, know what is an IP, what is routing, what is switching. And you can start by studying some certification. So you can add a value to your CV. And then you can go to the more technical or more deep levels of these. Like, in networking, there are many fields inside, but you need to start with the basics first.

Gulalai Khan: A comment from the fact that when women join, for example, when they become part of infrastructural projects, sometimes the work in odd hours is also an issue. And that is a barrier for a lot of women. A lot of women engineers, they are not able to, you know, leave, like, stay there at night. And even if they want to stay at night, the men on the field will tell them, it’s better you don’t stay there. So anybody who’s had that sort of an experience and…

Joyce Chen: Thanks very much for the question, Maureen. That’s a great question. And just to add on to what Noha said, each of the internet organizations, so whether it’s APNIC, where I come from, or ICANN, or the Internet Society, each of us all have different, very basic online courses that you can take to do with networking, to do with the DNS or the domain name system, to do with internet governance. So there’s a lot of very rich resources that you can tap on, all for free. You just need to sign up into our portals and basically you can do the course online. It’s not a big barrier. They’re all free, so you just do it in your own time. There are also certain workshops and training courses that each of our organizations regularly conduct, and oftentimes we also go to the countries themselves to train the local community. So there’s a lot of capacity building that is happening, especially when it comes to networking and basics for networking and networking 101, that sort of thing. And so I think, as Noha was saying, you start from the basics. There are a lot of free materials out there, and when you are in these courses, when you are in these capacity building initiatives, try your best to get to know the network. So, you know, make friends with your fellows who are there, make friends with the mentors who are there, and that’s how you build, basically, your own human network. It’s not just about learning the skills or learning the knowledge and applying it, but it’s also really making those human connections, because that’s where it really helps your career to grow. I also wanted to… touch on the point that Sonal was saying, which is that especially, I think, in the engineering field and network engineering space, the network operators, very often, there are a lot of men. When the men socialize, they have a very specific way of socializing, and sometimes it may not be so friendly for women to participate. And that was one of the reasons that I said that, you know, you can have a setup where it is inclusive. So yes, there are women around. But it doesn’t mean that the women are being included, because sometimes it really can be quite hard for us to be included, especially in social events, especially when we are trying to network. I would say the best way is to try and change cultural norms. Is it really necessary, for example, if we are going out on a social event, that everybody has to be heavily drinking? You know, that sort of thing happens a lot when it is an all-men kind of social event, and it might not be a very safe space for women. And so I think in this session, when we’re talking about how do we create a welcoming or inclusive environment for women, we also have to talk about safety, talk about personal security. I think these are things that people take for granted. They just do what they’ve always done. It’s a very generational habit. I think we can change that, you know, make it a more welcoming and safe environment for women to also operate in.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you for that, Joyce. I’m sorry, I have my back to the audience, but if I can take one question, if there’s anybody from the audience, if you could just put your hand up, and I’ll ask my colleagues to help me.

Audience: Thank you. Hello, good evening. My name is Atikullah. Can you hear me? My name is Atikullah. I came here from Kabul, Afghanistan. As the Internet become the powerful tools for empowering women globally and providing them different opportunities, so as the current government in Afghanistan is day by day limiting education for women and banning them from working in the organization, so is there any special program from APNIC Foundation or any other organization where the women can learn from Internet? Thank you.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you for that suggestion, and I’m sure we’re going to take that up very seriously. We already have a program called Digital Leap, and we had a session at 11.30 today, and we also have a switch program, but thank you for that interjection. I’m going to move now to the second question. It’s also a policy-level question, but I want to go a little bit deeper in how do we address the gender gap in tech-related fields, so we are becoming a little more specific, such as cybersecurity, and how do we encourage more women to pursue careers in that field? Should you have incentives? How do we get them to sustain their education? How do we address some of their barriers? So I’m going to turn to Amrita, and from your experience, Amrita, what is it, what sort of policies do we need for education, capacity development in the industry in terms of employment, policy issues at the macro level, local level? Can you share anything from India?

Amrita Choudhury: Thanks. I hope I’m audible now. To begin with, I would say that when policies are being made in government, in business, women should be there in the table. That’s the first thing. It should not be someone else who’s making it on your behalf that patronizing attitude should not be there Especially if you want to make it work, for example, you know We’ve been talking about making it more welcoming for women to join and be there and grow up What about women who have to take? You know a leave go back for two three years and come back is industry or government welcoming them Do they get the similar kind of jobs which they left and went they don’t they’re left behind the question which comes is Why do women not go up? Sometimes they have to sacrifice for their families, but industry or governments are not so welcoming so do we have such processes or Or I would say areas where they can be upscaled and taken at the same level because normally if you go to industry and What you hear informally obviously of officially they can’t say is oh they you know, they went back earlier, you know It’s three years. They’ve lost a lot of time. Where is their colleagues move much up and then they can’t do that so what kind of You know processes are we having is it welcoming if that’s welcoming that it would encourage many more women who have perhaps Joined those industries to move up because they see some opportunity You know, that’s very important if I look at countries and I would only comment upon India there are various schemes If you look at the papers, there are various schemes, you know, it starts with stem cell Encouraging at the school level stem cell even in rural areas promoting women Young girls in stem cells upgrading their skills at the next level You also have programs for women scientists in exploratory research. So a very higher up even PhD candidates you have skilled development or even entrepreneurship You have banks giving loans to women to start businesses because that’s also empowerment It could be using tech related things. You have startups coming up where women are incentivized but how what are the challenges which comes you you know you may have schemes but how can you scale them up or make them work is something perhaps we need to do a bit more rethinking how they work how they do not work I think that’s something which is I feel it’s important the other question which was being discussed you know it was posted in this group was I think the question which was posed is she is new she wants to become more you know experienced in this thing how to leverage the network I think women can have to help other women at least some who have risen or have known because if you kind of help each other the entire community gets uplifted and I think many of them do mentorships informally also help networks help you can use tools like LinkedIn etc which I commented upon to help and I think if you can come to know of best practices of some policies which some countries or you know have kind of implemented sharing it within community at different countries helps to say to go to your come you in country you know authorities and say look this is the kind of thing it’s not criticizing but you’re saying that this could be made better and I think companies also have to stop the lip service and move ahead you know we say we want to encourage women but in our terms if a woman wants to go in for maternity leave for six months go ask their bosses what faces they make at least in South Asia I’ll leave it at that.

Sonal Zaveri: thanks Amrita for talking you know the reality that most women face in their biological role for their families and you know how women can have the power to empower others and I think that’s absolutely vital. I want to turn to Lima and Lima you can speak a great deal about conservative countries and how would you apply basic rights of women in such countries? For example we talk about education, we talk about mobility, what does it mean when we speak you know these words of empowerment, responsibility of the international community to address these issues? What comes to your mind? Over to you Lima.

Lima Madon: Thank you Sona. Listening to all of the women’s in this panel talking about their countries and the initiatives that they are having in terms of empowering women and in terms of helping them to develop more in engineering field makes me happy, really makes me happy, but at the same time it makes me sad to think about the women’s in my country who does not even have the basic rights to pursue their education and to finish school. After sixth standard they have to stay at home and they are not allowed to even pursue their further education. So when I think about empowerment for women, for me as a woman coming from a very conservative country, it is about until when I could access certain education or certain opportunities that are available or from a perspective of an Afghan woman, what type of opportunities are available for us and until when. It’s more about, for us it’s more about access because we don’t have at the first place access and after access I think for us it will come to be empowerment because we don’t even have the basic rights that a lot of women in the world might have. Women from certain developing countries, they have these rights much easier compared to women from Afghanistan, for example. I heard that in Georgia, the gender balance in universities are almost 50-50. That’s wonderful. That’s one of the best things I think I have heard for a very long time in terms of gender equality. But then I come back to Afghanistan and then I think about all of these things where it doesn’t even exist. When we are talking about all of these things, I think for Afghan women, it will be that Amrita mentioned that not a lot of women in certain parts of the world does not have the same rights. Even within Afghanistan, if we compare rural areas with urban areas, it’s still very different. The conservative culture of rural areas are much more severe or much more stronger compared to the urban areas. For example, I grew up in a city, in an urban area, and I had much more access to education for better opportunities compared to a woman that was from the same country and coming from a village. She might not even know there are certain areas in Afghanistan that they are not even aware that the internet exists or if the internet is something. A lot of women don’t even know how to use a phone or make a call. So when I think about it, to reach to the level of access so that then we could talk about empowerment. So that’s I think there’s a lot when I talk about these things about Afghanistan and countries like Afghanistan but I think I will leave it at this and back to you Sonal.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank You Lima and what you’ve mentioned is that we have to be contextual. It’s not the same everywhere. It’s not the same in each country also and you mentioned something very important is that it’s not that women can’t do it. Sometimes the environment is such that somebody is assuming, somebody is making the decision that you cannot achieve in these STEM fields, let alone education. So it’s somebody’s decision, mostly male, deciding what 50% of the population can or cannot do. So I’m now going to turn to Arinola and thank you for your patience being online. Arinola, you have a lot of experience working with youth and women and so how do we going to address the gender gap in tech related fields? What’s been your experience and what are some of the lessons that we can learn? Over to you.

Arinola Akinyemi: Okay, thank you Sonal. Hi everyone. I trust we are having a good time at the IGA. It’s an interesting question really for me because having worked in the STEM region, personally, I’m an engineer by profession. So being in the STEM industry, from my own personal experience, it started at a very tender age for me. Personally, I was fortunate like Lima was saying to have grown up in an urban area and I had what you call the support from home. My dad told me before I turned, while I was a toddler and he said, I think there was something coming up that I was not aware of. And I was like, okay, I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to do this. And as Africans, generally, you have the tradition where you believe that, OK, this is a female thing, this is a male thing, that cultural thing. And he called me, and he said, don’t you ever tell yourself that, OK, you can be whatever you want to be, and you can do whatever you want to do. And that is where self-confidence, self-belief comes in for me. And that is meant to be applicable to all women, believing that we can do it. We’ve got the ability, and we’ve got the potential, and then we can move on. And that helped me in my daily life, and it helped me in my career, in my choice of career also. And I ended up studying Computer Electronics Engineering at the University. And interestingly, the percentage from gender is amazing, really, because at the time I was getting into the University, in my class, we were 31. It was 30 male and one female. At graduation, it was 20 male and one female. So that is something we need to get over, that gender negative stereotyping. I cannot do it. We need to help ourselves. That’s the best way to empower ourselves as women, and that’s the best way we can do it. And then another thing we could also look at is mentorship. We cannot take that away. Those of us who have been opportune to come out and privileged to be in the positions we find ourselves, maybe successful in your business, successful as a techie, go back and give back to the system. Hold somebody. Let that person know that, OK, there is support. There is guidance. This is the way to go. You can do it. and then we’ll see ourselves making it forth. Also, there’s also the need for ROS, because oftentimes, in my experience, having worked with youth and women, I have discovered that financial literacy and planning is also a major challenge that we have. Oftentimes, we cannot save, we don’t have the right budgeting skills, we cannot do the right investment. So these are areas wherein we need to help also as successful ones to mentor and to show this direction, because once you can do most of those things, you’ll find yourselves excelling in this, and then you find the gap being bridged, because the moment you have financial literacy and then you have the planning skills, the issue of not being involved will not be there. Also, you can also go into time management and prioritization. When you look at it, as women, we have certain roles that are meant for us. We take care of the kids, we take care of the home, and then how do you balance these two together? So the ability to be able to balance is where the success rate of bridging that gap will come. Because, okay, an example will be as a techie, for the male, they can go to work and come back at about 12, 1, midnight, nobody says anything, but as a woman, you’ll find it difficult to do that because you think of the kids. So how do you balance this? These are where policies needs to be made by the government that will encourage for women to be able to balance their work from home and then enjoy equal opportunities as a male counterpart. at will, equity, not equality now, but equity, because there’s a lot of difference between equality and equity. For me, I believe in equity rather than equality, because when you say equality means I would still be at a disadvantage. But when you say equity, that means you’re looking at where the disadvantage is currently for me, which is considering that I have a family life that I have to work with, and then the government should be able to enact laws that will make it possible for me to still do the same thing without necessarily jeopardizing my family life. For us in Nigeria, especially in Africa, ICT Alliance currently, where I sit as the vice chair for West Africa with a vision of the promise of the digital age for Africa, interestingly, it’s almost an all-female leadership. And that is where we are coming up with ideas for women to be able to take rules where policy decisions are being made, because our absence has contributed greatly to most of these laws being enacted without our imputes into them. Additionally, part of the steps that could be taken to mitigate this or to bridge this gap would also be addressing discrimination and harassment. A lot of us have experienced it. Well, it might not be intentional. It could be an unintended one. But oftentimes, we experience it where people make mockery of you. And then you have to dress like a male to look like, to fit in, in the techie world and all of that. But most importantly, In my experience, I think advocacy and awareness is very key to the success of bridging the gap. We need to empower and awaken the consciousness of the woman to know the importance of Internet access, how the Internet can empower them, and then how being in the STEM field is a possibility. When we advocate for these policies and initiatives, like currently in Nigeria, we have some initiatives that are going on, and the success rate is quite interesting. There’s the Women in Tech in Nigeria, where we offer a mentorship program to female and experienced professionals. The experienced professionals provide guidance. It’s a mentoring program. Currently, 80% of the mentees have reported improvement in their career prospects. That is the strength of mentoring. About 70% increase in confidence and self-esteem. Those are the things we should be looking at. I believe when we continue to do these things and work on these policies, we will eventually get to where we will sit and not be talking about equality, but we will be feeling like it’s a norm. Thank you.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you very much. Women should be at the decision-making. Women should be there when policies are made for them. That point was also made by Amrita. You talked about many of the issues that we have been discussing here today, about social norms, cultural norms. I know Gulalai mentioned one of the problems about if you’re working late in infrastructure, what can you do? I’m sure there’s a lot you can do, but one has to put one’s head to it. Think about it as important and address some of those cultural and social norms. You can always shatter the glass ceiling I’m going to pause again and If there are any questions this time, I’m going to ask from the audience Behind me. All right. Thank you, please

Audience: Am I audible Okay. Thank you There were like very interconnected discussions about women empowerment especially what Amrita mentioned and what Leymah said about women in Afghanistan and You also pointed that it should be contextualized but now like that question is as Amrita said like women should be there to decide and in terms of like policymaking regulations these things As you also say that it depends on the cultures and the society so how it’s gonna happen especially for like women who Are not allowed to decide for themselves. So that is the biggest question and the second thing I’m gonna say is the it’s not a question, but share of my idea that empowerment of women starts within women especially in Societies like ours. I have experienced Living in Pakistan as a refugee back in 90s and also living in Afghanistan, which is my own country and seeing the culture of in India by visiting and as well as by watching their Bollywood movies so that women Most of the women they don’t believe in themselves that they are similar to women I mean as strong as women as capable as women and especially like for example, I will be giving a very stupid example that when they want a child, so the first person who wants a son is the mother herself. So the woman empowerment starts before a woman is born. So if mothers believe that they are stronger and if they got a daughter, the daughter would be the same as their sons, then I think the woman empowerment will start from there. Thank you very much.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you for that comment. We’ve got two hands up. Shall I come to Lima? Would you like to comment?

Lima Madon: Yes, thank you, Sona. The thing I wanted to mention was about Rayoob’s comment that he mentioned. It was about the fact that when a woman is pregnant and she’s having a child, she’s the first one that wants a son. I think in here, it’s the societal norms that making the woman sort of forced to want that. Because even coming from Afghanistan myself, in our society, it is a very big thing if a woman gives birth to a son because she is then valued much more and much larger compared to if she gives birth to a daughter, for example. So in that sense, it’s not the woman who decides. It’s the community and the society that, in a way, decide for her. And she has no other option to survive. It’s a way of survival for her and in a way of protection of her child because she wants her child to be protected. And she doesn’t want a daughter to have the same… sort of future that she had. That’s why she wants a son. Not because she doesn’t like a daughter, but because it’s the society, it’s the community that’s forcing her to have that. And coming back to the women empowering women, I think it’s a very important point. Mentorship from women and community, women-led communities and women, the communities that are made by women for women, the mentorship programs that are from women for women, these are very important for the empowerment of women and for development of women in any field, but especially in technology and STEM.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you, Lima. That was very passionate and coming from the heart. Joyce, you had your hand up, but may I request you to keep it to one minute because we still have one more question to go through.

Joyce Chen: Thank you. Thanks very much. And thanks also for the question. So I come from a very sort of more traditional patriarchal kind of family as well. And these are all lived experience. I genuinely believe there are not many women out there, even in that room, who have not come from such a background. I think it’s partly a generational problem. It’s also partly that progress is just very slow. And I would say from personal experience that one of the ways to counter cultural bias or discrimination is honestly to just fight through it. It’s a lot of fighting. It’s very tiring. It’s a lot of suffering as well. But I think that, as Lima said before, education is such an important thing because education enriches the mind. And when you know that there’s a bigger world, out there, there is something to fight for that is bigger than yourself and bigger than your personal circumstance. And I think coming back to internet governance, that is also the beauty of the internet. I mean, we talk a lot about the problems that come with the internet, a lot of internet evils that are happening and no doubt, but I think also we need to appreciate the beauty of which the internet is able to broaden people’s lives and experiences to live and learn things that are beyond your physical circumstance. And that’s one way I think for women to be able to break free and to join that fight. I have a comment that came after Lima, I think you were talking about experience in developing countries and how it is so difficult even to have basic fundamental rights. I wanted to follow on to say that unfortunately, even in the developed countries, what we used to think were fundamental women’s rights are very quickly getting eroded as well. So it is a fight that we keep fighting and we can’t take for granted that the rights that have been given to us will always be there for us and we have to keep fighting for it. And I think that that is the reality. Sorry Sonal, I think I took more than a minute.

Sonal Zaveri: Perfectly fine, I know that this is something that’s so personal to us that we cannot not respond. And I think Amrita also wants to have a quick word. And I will take it from Gayur’s question and I will flip it off.

Amrita Choudhury: In a repressed society where women have zero rights, for centuries she’s not allowed to think. How do you think that she will suddenly arise and come out? It’s very difficult. I would flip it, what are the men in that house doing to help her? Obviously Sonal, I think yesterday or day before Shared that you know the community can work work with others in that society religious people try to get in a bit of Education etc to move it, but I think it is not just the woman’s Duty to one day rise shine think I can make it because she will be repressed in those kind of places Some rise millions just perish But I think it’s the responsibility also of the family and especially men That’s why you know having many men in the in the room helps because it’s just not a woman’s issue. It’s everyone’s issue

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you for that it is everyone’s issue and gender is not just about women it’s about men and women and who holds the power and we have to recognize that and be very forthright about You know who is going to help whom not just women but men have to also take their share and acknowledge and step up I do want to talk And I’m going to come to the online community a bit later because I do want to get to the third question and then we’ll Open it up This is for everybody, but I want to look at it a bit way forward so What sort of government? Policies or industry partnerships, do you think that we need to have? networking leadership opportunities For professional women in the tech sector, and I’d like you to talk about say three main topics Three main ideas that you think from your position you think we have to do as we move forward So I’m going to ask a Katrina first, and I know she’s been wanting to share some of her experiences

Ekaterine Imedadze: Thank you Thank you, yeah, it’s okay. Thank you so much actually I Think I Think that today’s discussion is also I think something is wrong with my headset, but if you can hear me, that’s okay. Remove? Okay, now it’s better. So today’s discussion is also part of what I think we need to do, and we need to do more, because IGF is a global forum, and paying more and more attention to the topics that are discussed now is becoming, is still, it is, we need to retain as a very important agenda point on the global forums in the technology, in the world of technology. So if we speak about the mentorship, I think that the ladies have mentioned it, it’s absolutely vital, because role modeling and speaking about personal experiences, personal challenges, it’s only possible through this very intimate relationship that is possible through mentorship cycle, because in the technological trainings, for example, you can gain some very good technical expertise, but I personally, I think that it has been three cycles with IT network of women. I’m trying to be a mentor on different tracks, like policy track, cyber track, and this, and first it has started with the European region, but also there is an opportunity to work with women in different geographic areas. It’s tremendous experience, and you do not always feel like you are a mentor, you learn a lot as a mentee, as a female, about the culture, about the solutions, so I think that international organizations have this mandate, I think, and state and policies, state has very, best situated to collaborate with international organization and promote women in their organization to be part of this mentorship cycle. I’ve heard from different women that it’s even sometimes limited at workplaces to be part of some mentorship cycle. I think that we also on the senior positions, male and female, are responsible giving the opportunity to the younger women being mentees in this type of of them of platforms because there are several very important platforms available. I mentioned ITU, there are different international organizations like GIZ and I don’t want to give you more names because there are a lot and lot and coming more and more platforms. So I think that what as a policy makers and just employees at our workplaces and as managers and leaders, we need to take care of people who want to grow, who want to take part of this kind of opportunities and you’ve mentioned also key takeaways for a way forward. I think that three main topics, maybe it’s not everything is in our power to change but first as a citizens we need to fight for the equal rights at work in the workplaces, changing the laws and policies and regulations so as the citizens to fight for it, to have this child care, to have flexible hours for women. This is something still a challenge in my country where for example at the educational level it’s available but not at the workplace level. The flexible hours for women, child care and this kind of the opportunities. Also it’s very important on the educational level, I mean from kindergarten in the families, in houses, and our fathers and brothers and friends, male friends, they play a crucial role to give us some kind of this support and to grow up your child or support your sister in this career path. I think those are the most important takeaways way forward. Thank you.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you very much. Absolutely very very important points that you said. It talks about personal, it also talks about what states can do, it acknowledges that women have challenges and you need to have policies to address that, such as child care, and you also mentioned very importantly what do international forums such as this, what are they going to do, how are they going to connect countries to be able to share among each other, you know, their experiences and to put this as a very important point on the agenda. I think far more can be done. I’m going to now turn to Noha.

Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky: Thank you Sunal. So I believe the government role here is crucial. First things first, the law need to ensure the safety of women in the workplace and her right to report any gender-based violence in her workplace. Also her right to take a career break, take a child care break or maternity leave, and also her right to return back to work. And it’s also crucial for the government to partner with the industry and tech companies to provide women with the needed digital skills to join the tech scene and to offer mentorship opportunities or internships and also to like push or force for diversity and inclusion in these companies as a KPI. And last thing I guess this partnership between government and industry needs to promote more the remote jobs and flexible environments so women can feel more comfortable when they choose tech as their career path.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you very much and thank you for saying that you need to have KPIs. Make people accountable right not just talk but walk that talk. I’m going to go online three takeaways or a couple of important points that you’d like to say. May I go to Joyce?

Joyce Chen: Thanks very much Sonal and I think I just before we close also wanted to say how much I enjoyed the session honestly and I really enjoyed the radical candor I think that all of our speakers on this panel have have shown in this session. I think one thing that policymakers can consider to do is think about diversity by design. So we often hear the phrase security by design and etc and you know spinoffs of this race so why why not have diversity by design and I have a few examples. So the APNIC fellowship for example is mandated that we have 50% gender parity in the program for APNIC fellows. We have the Asia-Pacific Internet Governance Academy which is another you know is one of those internet school of internet governance that also has the same by design it has a gender parity mandatory that 50 percent of the participants in this academy who want to learn about internet governance have to be split gender. So I can see that there is a trend now in programs to basically build this in already when they are recruiting for fellows, when they are recruiting for participants and I think there are many arenas that are already tracking and monitoring that there is equal participation from women. So we can definitely do more in this area. Whether or not we’re going to pass a law to do this, I don’t think we need to, but I certainly think it’s the kind of best practice that we can try and adopt just by being conscious about the sort of diversity that we are tracking. Thanks very much.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you, Joyce. I like that diversity by design and some of the initiatives that are already in place to ensure that that happens. May I go to Arinola? A couple of takeaways, way forward.

Arinola Akinyemi: Okay, thank you. For me, coming from the business or the industry perspective as a businesswoman, I would advise like we do, what I do is we have what you call the unconscious bias training that is provided for all employees so that that way, because it’s only natural. Oh, she’s a girl. So why should I want to work with her? So we do that so that it gets you to let go of that inbuilt, you know, unconsciousness or conscious belief, and then you’ll be able to work together freely in a more amiable environment. Also, the synergy between the government and the industry is very key to this, because the government makes the policy while the industry income. Now the industry employs, so if the government, the synergy between the government and the industry is solid, you will find out that the government will probably provide incentives to companies like maybe tax incentives for employing females in tech, maybe. And then we in the, like for me in the industry, currently we have some ongoing researches that I encourage, you know, women in tech to come on board and be the lead researchers while I put the male, you know, under them so that it makes it look very interesting. And it’s something that we try to compare notes, those of us in the industry to be able to work together so that we can continue to build this career path for women. Thank you.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you for that, Arinola. Very, very practical. We need to incentivize and that’s a partnership between government policy as well as industry. Absolutely critical to do so. So thank you for that. May I move to Lima?

Lima Madon: Yes, thank you. I think one of the most important things will be that there are multiple programs for women, but the success metrics of these programs are not as much evaluated. And some of these programs are having certain problems in terms of developing them and in terms of accessibility and other areas. So it’s very important to evaluate these programs and understand some of the problems that these programs might have and how to address those problems. So that will be one of the very important things. And I think the other important thing will be the flexible work policy. So, opportunities for women in terms of working from home, or parental leave, or some of these opportunities for women so that they could work, but also have the possibility of taking care of their families and staying with their children if needed. So, that could be also very important and it could encourage women in terms of working more and having more possibilities to be in STEM and these areas. Also one of the other important things, since being from this technology background and working in this industry, I think sometimes it’s very important to give some of the opportunity, to give some specific opportunities for women, because currently where I work, the number of women in comparison to men, it’s much lesser. Even though I work at Geneva University and it’s in Switzerland, it’s one of the universities that are promoting this thing to have more women, but the reason that we are not having a lot of women in STEM or in technology in general, especially even where I work, is because there isn’t a lot of flexibility offered for women and they are not well supported in a way. So, they work, but when we actually give opinions, they are not taken very seriously. So, to have a possibility to be considered equal or to have some sort of policies to give those opinions and be considered, I think that would be very important. Thank you.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you so much, Lima. You mentioned something very, very important. and that is that there has to be a system change. You can’t just expect women to, you know, I mean, yes, of course, you have to empower women, but you need a system change and consider all of this. And thank you so much for bringing up the evaluation point of view. I am an evaluator, so it was music to my ears to hear you say that we need to know what works, what doesn’t work, and that’s the only way we can improve and go forward. I’m going to come now to Amrita.

Amrita Choudhury: Thank you. So there could be many things at a macro level where we do not have so much of a hold, like for example, trying to ensure our regulators’ governments have women on board when they are discussing policies related to women or even commenting on it, but those are high-level things. Some actionable things, and APNIC Foundation may kill me for this, let me put it in their head, one is there are opportunities available. For example, Joyce was talking about the APNIC Foundation, APNIC’s scholarship, you know, fellowship opportunities, et cetera, or others also give opportunities. Why not create a repository where all these opportunities are listed, and we can all guide them to that, and possibly APNIC Foundation could lead on it. They may kill me now for this. Similarly, there are initiatives which are done. You were mentioning the switch initiative. Could the results or the impact those made on getting more women in tech, and how it helped the economies be published, which can be taken as case studies shared elsewhere, so that that can be an encouragement for governments, because you know, when they are evaluating things, results help. The other thing is, you know, perhaps we are discussing a lot of things. There could be a call for action which comes where we can draft something, you know, even a five points, we draft simple points. And APNIC Foundation could help it, they are in various countries and from that we take it to our respective countries and circulate it as a call for action. It doesn’t have to be very heavy-handed, it could be just five simple points that this is what we demand. I don’t know. Neeti, may kill me now.

Sonal Zaveri: Thank you very much for that. I think very, very practical. Action points, a call for action. In fact, even IGFs could do that, right? Have a gender stream which says this is what we must do. I think it has to be at that high-level advocacy as well as at the local level, whatever we can do.

Audience: And Sonal, there is a comment that probably we can ask the panelists on how to bring women into this technical community. For example, you talked about IGF and the ITU ones, so any suggestions on how they can be a part of it?

Sonal Zaveri: Who would like to take that? Amrita?

Amrita Choudhury: I think the question was not that, it was a statement on how to bring women in tech communities by panelists and what are the key steps. I think that’s what we’ve discussed. ITU has various initiatives for women in tech. You can look at it and that is why I said if there could be a repository where things could be linked, for example, ITU is doing something but it is linked in one site, it may help newcomers. It’s very difficult for people to navigate and that’s why I said make it simpler. And then once someone finds a path, they can do whatever they want. And about IGF, yes, IGF had a gender session earlier, gender and access. I was one of the co-moderators. Unfortunately, it was doing very well but then from the community, we needed volunteers for one year and there were no volunteers available. So that’s the hard reality. We talk about gender, we talk about many things but when it comes to rolling up the sleeves and working, it didn’t work. That time to bring mainstream gender into all the discussions.

Sonal Zaveri: Okay. All right. Some practical issues over there. Do we have any further comments online, Kulala? Okay. Anybody from the audience? I’m sorry, I’m just turning behind, but if there’s some comment, something that you want to question, anything from them? Okay. And maybe we can close the session. I think one of the very important points to take away is that there is a common thread in the stories that we’ve heard and in the experiences that we’ve learned from different continents. And they’ve come from Europe, come from Africa, they’ve come from Australia, they’ve come from Asia. And a number of them was talking about the personal, the mentorship, the power to empower, the role models, but also talked about, we need policies that address the challenges that women face. And so the concept that, Arunola, thank you so much for bringing that up, was about equality or equity. So when we talk about equality, gender equality, what does that mean? It’s formal equality. We assume that men and women are equal, but they’re not. And we know it. We have to speak about equity as the roadmap in order to achieve that equality. And that roadmap means we have to break the barriers. We have to look at the challenges. And we have to incentivize, whether we talk in the industry, whether we talk at the policy level, whether we talk at international spaces, local spaces and forums, we need to have those platforms where we continually advocate the personal as well as the systemic changes that have to come. We cannot be the only ones. shouting aloud for this change. We need everybody in the room to do so. And so we need men as allies, as believing that having women on board is good for them and for us and for society as a whole. And I really loved that, you know, thought that the internet opens up a whole new world for women. And when you think about the restricted lives that women lead, you know, the problems of mobility, you know, the restrictions and so many cultural norms that they have to face, the internet is really a wonderful world to experience, to learn and to grow and to be something more than where you are located anywhere in the world. In an urban area, in a rural area, in the remotest place of all, no matter who you are, there’s such a great promise that is there in the internet world. So with that, I’d like to thank all my speakers, the most wonderful role models. Every one of you have broken the glass ceiling. Thank you so much. Thank you so much to Gulalai. Thank you so much to Harisa of being present here today and helping us along. Thank you very much. Please don’t go away. We are going to take a photograph, so stay online. Keep the videos on.

Agreement Points

Importance of role models and mentorship

Joyce Chen

Ekaterine Imedadze

Arinola Akinyemi

Lima Madomi

Lack of role models and mentorship

Promoting role models and mentorship programs

Offering targeted training and skill development

Supporting women-led communities and networks

Multiple speakers emphasized the crucial role of female role models and mentorship programs in inspiring and supporting women to pursue and advance in tech careers.

Need for flexible work policies

Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky

Lima Madomi

Providing flexible work policies

Evaluating and improving existing programs

Speakers agreed on the importance of implementing flexible work policies, including remote work options and parental leave, to attract and retain women in tech fields.

Addressing discrimination and creating inclusive environments

Arinola Akinyemi

Joyce Chen

Addressing discrimination and creating inclusive environments

Implementing diversity by design in programs and recruitment

Speakers concurred on the need to address discrimination and create inclusive work environments through policies, training programs, and diversity-focused recruitment processes.

Similar Viewpoints

These speakers shared the view that promoting multidisciplinary skills and digital literacy is crucial for empowering women in tech and creating more inclusive environments.

Joyce Chen

Ekaterine Imedadze

Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky

Promoting multidisciplinary expertise and skills

Offering targeted training and skill development

Promoting digital literacy and skills development

Both speakers emphasized the importance of involving women in decision-making processes and creating incentives to promote gender diversity in tech industries.

Amrita Choudhury

Arinola Akinyemi

Ensuring women’s participation in policy-making

Providing incentives for companies employing women in tech

Unexpected Consensus

Leveraging internet for education and opportunities

Joyce Chen

Sonal Zaveri

Lima Madomi

Leveraging internet for education and opportunities

Using technology to overcome mobility restrictions

Supporting women-led communities and networks

There was an unexpected consensus on the transformative power of the internet in providing education and opportunities for women, particularly in overcoming physical and cultural barriers. This agreement spans across speakers from different regions and backgrounds.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement included the importance of role models and mentorship, the need for flexible work policies, addressing discrimination, promoting multidisciplinary skills, and leveraging technology for women’s empowerment.

Consensus level

There was a high level of consensus among the speakers on the key challenges faced by women in tech and the strategies needed to address them. This strong agreement implies a shared understanding of the issues and potential solutions, which could facilitate more coordinated and effective efforts to increase gender diversity in tech fields.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to addressing gender inequality

Joyce Chen

Lima Madomi

Promoting role models and mentorship programs

Limited access to education and opportunities

Joyce Chen emphasizes the importance of promoting role models and mentorship programs, while Lima Madon focuses on the more fundamental issue of limited access to education and opportunities in some countries.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around the prioritization of different strategies to address gender inequality in tech, ranging from fundamental access issues to workplace policies and mentorship programs.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers is relatively low. Most speakers agree on the overall goal of increasing gender diversity in tech but propose different strategies based on their experiences and regional contexts. This diversity of perspectives enriches the discussion and highlights the need for multifaceted approaches to address the complex issue of gender inequality in the tech industry.

Partial Agreements

All speakers agree on the need for supportive policies to increase women’s participation in tech, but they propose different approaches: flexible work policies, company incentives, and targeted training programs.

Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky

Arinola Akinyemi

Ekaterine Imedadze

Providing flexible work policies

Providing incentives for companies employing women in tech

Offering targeted training and skill development

Similar Viewpoints

These speakers shared the view that promoting multidisciplinary skills and digital literacy is crucial for empowering women in tech and creating more inclusive environments.

Joyce Chen

Ekaterine Imedadze

Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky

Promoting multidisciplinary expertise and skills

Offering targeted training and skill development

Promoting digital literacy and skills development

Both speakers emphasized the importance of involving women in decision-making processes and creating incentives to promote gender diversity in tech industries.

Amrita Choudhury

Arinola Akinyemi

Ensuring women’s participation in policy-making

Providing incentives for companies employing women in tech

Key Takeaways

There are persistent cultural, social, and systemic barriers preventing women from entering and advancing in tech and STEM fields

Mentorship, role models, and women-led networks are crucial for supporting women in tech

Policies and initiatives need to address work-life balance issues and create more inclusive environments

Partnerships between government, industry, and international organizations are important for driving change

The internet and technology can be powerful tools for empowering women and providing new opportunities

Diversity and inclusion efforts need to go beyond tokenism to create meaningful change

Resolutions and Action Items

Create a repository of opportunities and initiatives for women in tech

Publish case studies and impact assessments of successful programs supporting women in tech

Draft a call to action with key demands to support women in tech

Promote ‘diversity by design’ in recruitment and programs

Evaluate existing programs supporting women in tech to identify areas for improvement

Unresolved Issues

How to effectively change deep-rooted cultural norms that discourage women from pursuing tech careers

How to increase women’s participation in high-level tech policy discussions

How to address the digital divide and ensure equal access to technology for women in developing countries

How to retain women in tech careers long-term and increase representation in leadership roles

Suggested Compromises

Focus on equity rather than strict equality to account for different challenges faced by women

Implement flexible work policies to help balance career and family responsibilities

Provide incentives for companies that employ and promote women in tech roles

Being inclusive does not necessarily predicate being included. They’re quite different, being inclusive versus actually being included.

speaker

Joyce Chen

reason

This comment highlights a crucial distinction between formal inclusion and meaningful participation, challenging surface-level approaches to diversity.

impact

It shifted the conversation to focus more on the quality of inclusion rather than just numerical representation, leading to discussion of workplace culture and barriers women face even when formally included.

We need to move from tokenistic participation to more meaningful ones. And let’s never ever forget that gender rights are human rights and the internet empowers human rights.

speaker

Sonal Zaveri

reason

This comment frames gender equality in tech as a human rights issue and emphasizes the internet’s role in empowerment, elevating the stakes of the discussion.

impact

It broadened the scope of the conversation from industry-specific concerns to wider societal implications, encouraging participants to consider the broader context of their work.

Empowerment of women starts within women especially in societies like ours. I have experienced living in Pakistan as a refugee back in 90s and also living in Afghanistan, which is my own country and seeing the culture of in India by visiting and as well as by watching their Bollywood movies so that women Most of the women they don’t believe in themselves that they are similar to women I mean as strong as women as capable as women

speaker

Audience member

reason

This comment brings in a perspective from a highly conservative society, highlighting internalized biases and the complexity of empowerment in different cultural contexts.

impact

It prompted a deeper discussion about the role of societal norms and self-belief in women’s empowerment, leading to reflections on how to address deeply ingrained cultural barriers.

I think in here, it’s the societal norms that making the woman sort of forced to want that. Because even coming from Afghanistan myself, in our society, it is a very big thing if a woman gives birth to a son because she is then valued much more and much larger compared to if she gives birth to a daughter, for example.

speaker

Lima Madomi

reason

This comment provides crucial context to the previous point, explaining how societal pressures shape women’s preferences and choices, even in deeply personal matters.

impact

It deepened the analysis of cultural barriers, leading to a more nuanced discussion of how to address gender inequality in highly traditional societies.

I think diversity by design. So we often hear the phrase security by design and etc and you know spinoffs of this race so why why not have diversity by design

speaker

Joyce Chen

reason

This comment introduces a novel approach to ensuring diversity, suggesting it should be built into systems and processes from the start rather than added as an afterthought.

impact

It shifted the discussion towards more proactive and systemic approaches to achieving gender diversity, inspiring ideas for concrete policy measures and organizational practices.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by moving it from surface-level observations about gender inequality in tech to a deeper, more nuanced exploration of cultural, societal, and systemic barriers. They challenged participants to think beyond simple numerical representation and consider the quality of inclusion, the role of internalized biases, and the need for proactive, systemic approaches to diversity. The discussion evolved from industry-specific concerns to broader considerations of human rights and societal change, emphasizing the complexity of the issue and the need for multifaceted solutions that address both personal empowerment and systemic barriers.

How can we create more welcoming and safe social environments for women in networking events and professional settings?

speaker

Joyce Chen

explanation

Joyce highlighted that even when women are included, they may not feel truly welcomed or safe in social settings dominated by men. This is important to address to improve women’s participation and advancement in tech fields.

What are effective ways to support women returning to tech careers after taking time off for family responsibilities?

speaker

Amrita Choudhury

explanation

Amrita noted that women often face challenges re-entering the workforce after taking career breaks. Finding solutions is crucial for retaining women in tech long-term.

How can we better evaluate and improve the effectiveness of existing programs aimed at supporting women in tech?

speaker

Lima Madomi

explanation

Lima emphasized the need to assess current initiatives and address their shortcomings. This is important for ensuring resources are used effectively to support women.

What incentives (e.g. tax breaks) could governments offer companies to encourage hiring and promoting women in tech roles?

speaker

Arinola Akinyemi

explanation

Arinola suggested government incentives could motivate companies to improve gender diversity. Exploring specific policy options is important for driving change.

How can we create a comprehensive repository of opportunities (scholarships, fellowships, etc.) for women in tech across different organizations?

speaker

Amrita Choudhury

explanation

Amrita proposed centralizing information on opportunities to make them more accessible. This could help more women find and take advantage of existing support programs.

What strategies can be used to encourage more women to apply for leadership and board positions in tech organizations?

speaker

Joyce Chen

explanation

Joyce noted that often few or no women apply for top positions. Understanding how to motivate more women to pursue these roles is crucial for improving representation at decision-making levels.

How can we better support and empower women in highly conservative societies to pursue education and careers in tech?

speaker

Lima Madomi

explanation

Lima highlighted the extreme challenges faced by women in some cultures. Finding ways to reach and support these women is essential for global gender equity in tech.

What are best practices for implementing ‘diversity by design’ in tech industry recruitment, events, and programs?

speaker

Joyce Chen

explanation

Joyce suggested intentionally designing for diversity from the start. Exploring how to effectively implement this approach across the industry could lead to systemic improvements.