UN Women celebrates International Girls in ICT Day
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To reveal the challenges that women and girls face in the field of information and communications technology (ICT), as well as some real-life examples of overcoming these challenges, six women in the sector shared their impressive stories with an audience gathered for PechaKucha Nights.
The event, sponsored by UN Women and the Tbilisi Startup Bureau, was dedicated to International Girls in ICT Day. The purpose of which was once again to remind the public of the importance of providing women and girls with equal career opportunities in the field. The speakers themselves placed special emphasis on this very issue in their informal speeches, while also covering a variety of areas including cybersecurity, data science, IT projects and the like.
“PechaKucha-type events allow us, the speakers, to share real-life experiences with women and tell them that the prevailing view – that ICT is a male-only profession – is actually a stereotype,” said Nino Dzamashvili, Quantori Georgia’s IT project manager and one of the keynote speakers.
Participant Lolita Rurua, a data scientist in the Risk Department at Liberty, added: “I think it’s necessary to use all technical platforms to stimulate women’s interest and raise their awareness so that, without the influence of stereotypes, everyone is enabled to equally choose and to do what they really love.”
Notably, the special guest at this PechaKucha Nights meeting was Linda Pereira, a businesswoman and technology industry trainer who has won numerous prestigious awards. During the event, she shared five strategies for success in business with the audience.
PechaKucha Nights itself acts as a meeting space that encourages innovators, entrepreneurs and change-makers to share their ideas and projects with an audience. Devised in 2003 by young designers in Tokyo, the event is now held in more than 1,200 cities. PechaKucha Nights has now been held in Georgia for the fourth time with the support of UN Women. The partners of the event were Liberty (a signatory to the United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles), the Friedrich Newman Foundation for Freedom in the South Caucasus and THE Crossroads.
UN Women has supported and promoted women and girls in ICT since 2019. Support for PechaKucha Nights is also part of the Women’s Economic Empowerment component in the “Good Governance for Gender Equality in Georgia” project, which is implemented with the financial support of the Government of Norway.