Dear TechAways readers,
This week’s edition is presented to you by our Happiness Team. We’re a group of lovely colleagues at Cambre who think about ways that we as a company can become more sustainable and better support one another. We’re extending International Women’s day a whole five days to bring you a TechAways edition filled with stories about women in tech (but really, we empower and celebrate women every day). We also want to share our list of resources and content promoting gender diversity (and strong women leads 💪💁) that we published on Monday to honour and celebrate IWD2021. We’re sharing the books, movies, podcasts, TV shows and more that we love. Netflix made the “strong female lead” category a phenomenon, and if you’re interested in how they focus on gender diversity you can check out this week’s Euractiv ‘over a coffee’ interview with Netflix’s European strategy lead, Lina Brouneus.
And because Cambre empowers and celebrates women every day, we were thrilled that Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s Digital EVP, moderated our latest #BrusselsCalling media debate. We’re also excited to be hosting Commission VP Vera Jourova as moderator of our next one – on diversity and inclusion on 13 April. Stay tuned for further details!
Happy reading everyone!
– Vanessa and Elli, Co-Chairs of The Happiness Practice
The missing link in cybersecurity [Wired]
Malware and phishing schemes as well as the online harassment of women and girls have increased during the pandemic. The solution? Bring more women into the cybersecurity sector. Currently only 24% of the global cybersecurity force are women. Leaving women out of technological developments has led to catastrophic effects in the past such as smart home tech being used by domestic abusers, period tracking apps sharing data with third parties, social media enabling child predators and so on. Since women are often at the brunt of its dark side, it’s imperative we bring them into the cybersecurity world. How? Insuring inclusion is at the forefront – always. For a closer look at inclusion, we went into the Wired archives with an interview with the tech legend Maria Klawe, check it out here.
Supporting the new generation of women in tech [Forbes]
To mark International Women’s Day, the extraordinary women of T200 launched a new programme that has set bold goals to support the women tech leaders of tomorrow. Founded in 2017, T200 aims to elevate women’s leadership in tech by increasing the share of chief information and technology officers that are women (which is currently less than 20% of all CIOs!). T200’s new Lift Platform is a mentorship programme that will develop women in the tech pipeline who are ready to take on their first C-level role. T200 aspires to boost the creation of the new generation of women leaders in tech. Look out for the new tech wonder women!
How to fix a leaky pipeline? [Thomson Reuters Foundation]
The unfortunate reality of the tech world is that it is disproportionately dominated by men. One common explanation is the concept of the “leaky pipeline”. Women are often dissuaded or encounter obstacles at various stages of their lives to pursue a career in STEM. To solve this, one path is STEM mentorship programmes that expose women to leadership roles and normalise the idea of work-life balance. In the US, 3.5 million mothers left the workforce due to the pandemic. As the world starts to re-open, we have the chance to help support these women, and one way to do that is by offering a flexible work environment that keeps the options open for everybody and safeguards employee retention. This is a no brainer.
Bad Wi-Fi = lack of professionalism? 🤔 [Reuters]
Starting a job as a young woman in a large organisation can be daunting. Add in a pandemic and remote working and it can seem nearly impossible to gain visibility and climb the career ladder. These issues are compounded for women from minority backgrounds. Out of 3.7 million business leaders in England and Wales, only 1.5% come from minority backgrounds, an even fewer share are women. In addition to visibility issues, remote working means bad Wi-Fi connections and weird Zoom backgrounds, making it hard to look professional to new colleagues. Supporting minority women, especially in the beginning of their careers is key and organisations need to be looking for ways to have inclusive digital workspaces. Otherwise, we might have “a whole generation of lost talent.”
About this week’s editor, The Happiness Practice
As mentioned above, The Happiness Team aims to make Cambre more sustainable. We also organise some of Cambre’s fun internal activities such as potluck dinners and clothing drives (when it was still possible to meet in person). One of our most successful campaigns at the beginning of the pandemic was The Happiness Newsletter, which tried to brighten the early lockdown days with a list of free activities available online. And even though things are slowly starting to open up, we think they’re still a great resource – you can find them here and here.
In case you haven’t had enough…
Recognizing the Women Who Wove the Web [Wired]
Love, tech and online abuse of women in the time of coronavirus [Reuters]
10 Women in Science and Tech Who Should Be Household Names [Wired]
Women Report Worse Side Effects After a Covid Vaccine [New York Times]
The Unsinkable Maddie Stone, Google’s Bug-Hunting Badass [Wired]
‘Visible women’: Feminist mappers bridge data gap in urban design [Reuters]
The Most Awesome Codebreaker in World War II Was a Woman [Wired]
Apple Study Affirms That Women Do in Fact Have Cramps During Their Periods [Gizmodo]
COVID-19 fuelling education’s tech disruption, deepening digital divide [Reuters]
Coders Who Survived Human Trafficking Rewrite Their Identities [Wired]
Kept out of traditional jobs, transgender people see hope in tech world [Reuters]
“Often overlooked”: the media startups to watch in 2021 [Sifted]