| Description | Women Shift Digital is an active network developed since 2013 by body>data>space with partners to celebrate women in creative digital careers, to network the networks and to influence the influencers
We designed a programme of work, including a series of debates, conferences, mentoring, workshops, specifically addressing the imperative need for young women and women to be empowered to join the growing digital/technology sectors as active and successful professionals. Women Shift Digital has been a key part of this wider debate in the UK, in Europe and internationally.
Women and girls, equally to men and boys, need to be able to take advantages of the massive opportunities and knowledge offered by the tech revolution, to join innovative careers in business across sectors, to build confidence, ambition and risk taking aptitudes. The future of coding, design and content creation needs to be equally influenced and created by women and men.
Over the last 5 years, we have worked to encourage women and girls to become tomorrow’s successful producers, communicators, educators, coders, digital artists, designers, curators, writers and creatives. This is the right point in time to recognise and celebrate the greater benefits gender balance is bringing to the digital and tech marketplace in terms of creativity, user design and economic added value.
In May 2013 in Maribor (Slovenia) we bought experts and participants from the UK, Slovenia, Romania, France and the US together to discuss the situation of Women in Tech in Europe and beyond and how to encourage more girls and women to embrace digital careers. Only 11% of workers in the technology sector in Europe are women and only 4% of Venture Capital for technology companies goes to female-founded companies.
This was the first of our Women Shift Digital series of events, organised as part of the EU Culture project Robots and Avatars project (lead by body>data>space, UK with partners KIBLA, Slovenia and AlatArt, Romania) and hosted by KIBLA. Since then we have organised a series of meet ups, conferences and debates, with support from the National Theatre, Level 39, Telefonica, SAP and Ztudium Ltd amongst others.
The issue of equality for women in the European Union, their access to and involvement in digital technologies has become an imperative and topical debate. As we become more deeply engaged in the digital world of virtual physical communications, collaborations and connections across the EU, we considered it essential to examine some of the issues for women and girls in relation to digital access and creation:
- How do we approach skills sets which are still seen as
a “boys domain” by many girls of school age?
- Can we find ways to involve young women in digital skills
development through finding solutions for
the issues they are interested in?
- How do we ensure a feminine viewpoint will emerge in the
next generations of arts, software development,
web, social media and other digital businesses?
- How do we encourage women to enter the tech sector with confidence?
- How do we ensure creative skills are recognised as imperative in the design of new tech tools and softwares?
Our vision is that, equally to men, women need to be able to take up the opportunities and knowledge offered by the tech revolution. The future of design and creativity through software and hardware needs equally to be influenced and created by women to enable a balanced perspective, to avoid bias and this equality needs to be fully integrated at the base of all new technological tools and processes. We work with many other women in tech networks in London, UK and worldwide to knowledge exchange support and ensure this debate is bought to the forefront of political and social discussion, including TLA Women In Tech and the Stemettes. We also give advice to politicians and regularly talk into press, radio and tv about the issues. |
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