Women in Tech is an educational infrastructure and a supportive environment, created by women for women who want to develop a career in IT. In September, the project website was launched, and at the same time the team organized a Women in Tech forum in Vilnius, with the aim to introduce the IT sector to women – ways to enter and the nuances of hiring in the industry, ways to build their own career map, tips for successful interviewing and the peculiarities of recruiting in IT. The forum brought together experts and representatives of IT companies as well as those who are only thinking about a career in the industry. A total of almost 700 people attended the forum (online and offline) and the media coverage was almost 13 thousand people. We talked about the forum’s main insights here.
In October, the project launched Login to tech – a free educational program for women who want to work in IT, but don’t know how to start. Login to tech – three months of training, 21 video lectures from IT experts about professions, opportunities and ways of entering the industry, more than 50 homework tasks, tests and checklists, and personal HR reviews from professional recruiters. The organizers received 628 applications to participate in the first stream of the program, and more than 1,100 women have already registered for the second stream (which starts in February 2023)! We asked the participants of the first stream Login to tech what they thought about the course and how their expectations were matched with reality, and we shared the results of the survey here. 98.8% of the participants were satisfied with the training, and in response to the open question, “Is there anything else you’d like to add?” 37% of participants expressed their gratitude and appreciation for the Login to Tech course organizers.
In November, the project launched a mentoring program. This is an opportunity for women who work in IT and want to make a breakthrough in their career with the support of a mentor and a community of like-minded women. In two weeks, the organizers received 185 applications from potential mentees and 50 applications from IT professionals who want to become mentors. 45 mentees and 37 mentors were selected to participate. Half of the participants have up to 2 years of professional experience, while 45% of the mentors have more than 10 years of experience in IT. Most of the participants are from Belarus, but the general geography is wide – from Lithuania to Israel and Turkey. The areas for development are also diverse: Project Management, DEV, HR, QA, BA, UI, and UX. Mentors are professionals from companies like Google, EPAM, AWS, PandaDoc, and others. We also talked more about the mentoring program in the news, read it here.
By the end of the year Women in Tech published the results of the research “Belarusians on the way to IT: myths, fears, obstacles”, conducted by EHU Master’s student (Gender Studies) Marina Mentusova, the aim of the research was to find out why there are so few women in Belarusian IT. The study was conducted in the form of an online survey. 233 Belarusian women took part in it. 95% of respondents faced prejudice and doubts about the cognitive abilities of women, 75% of respondents believe that these stereotypes prevent women from becoming programmers and engineers. You can find the results of the study on the project website, and we also talked about it briefly on the EHU website.
But the main achievement of Women in Tech is the community, the community of mutual support, exchange of experience, networking and diversity. In four months, the project brought together over 2,000 people, including program participants, IT professionals, lecturers and mentors, representatives of NGOs and the Academy. Educational programs by Women in Tech are presented by a community of women aged 18-54 (almost 10% of 40-50+ age group) from 12 countries of the world. Most of them are Belarusians, living now in Belarus, another 20% come from Poland, but there are also participants from Ukraine, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Czech Republic, France, and other countries. 73% of participants have no experience in IT-sphere, most of the women came from non-technical specialties. The leading areas of the starting professional realization are finance, non-commercial sector (17.6%), journalism, culture and PR (13.5%), business, trade and sales (12%), as well as education, medicine, etc.
The project Women in Tech is implemented by the EHU Center for Gender Studies, with the financial support of the European Union.