We need more women in IT: realization from AUW We Tech Fest

Last month I had a visit to a tech fest arranged by IT Club of Asian University for Women where I had to take a session on Ruby on Rails platform.  The thing I realized that woman all over the world are trying to keep their pace with the male dominated technology world. I wish I can romanticize the whole thing as a very easy to do thing for them. Irony is, it isn't.

In a developing country like Bangladesh, a girl always faces constant challenge in every aspect of her life. The way she should wear dress, the way she should think, even her career choice, her personal life - everything is being manipulated by the socio-economic factors. Our society loves to portray girl as a future mother,  not as a future leader in professional fields. Specially they face uneven hindrances with many double standards. Parents love to educate their daughters, not for being self dependent, respected human entity. in most of the cases, for getting a better husband. In this stereotypical set up, it is awe inspiring to imagine the girls of ours are going to lead the future technology world. I'm glad I could see the dream in their eyes.

I work in software industry, from my experience I've seen lower participation of women everywhere I worked, from startup to huge corporation, from Asia to USA, I've seen the tendency of thinking women as less of a technology people. For the lower participation, women are facing harassment in their workplaces. The github incident is just a fraction of the whole picture of global IT industry. Women are being harassed everywhere in the world.

The most important thing in tech world is how to introduce, innovate and improvise ideas. The way we can engage people from different backgrounds, it would be better to create a solution that could really make a dent to the world for the better future of us. We need more people - who can think out of the box, who have the courage of breaking the stereotypes, get out of their comfort zone and take the challenge to do what matters most. It's still tough for them to survive in school, the workplace and in case of entrepreneurship women have to deal with a lot more problems than a the male counterpart.

I'm not saying that there aren't any success stories, there are loads of female tech personalities  proving themselves everyday. I love being hopeful, but still I think we couldn't make this tech world a gender discrimination free place. After a few days of starting career, most of them can understand that meritocracy is a lie.

Courtesy: XKCD

Well, that's how we think. We love to imagine the male factor made us a better race, it's in our DNA that we try to overcome our frustration of our failure by creating a mindset which favors our way of thinking. We love being opinionated, being judgmental, bombast with our misconceptions, we are making the hostile world for the half of the human society. Treating a woman as a human being is still an issue in the developed world. I love to imagine a tech world without gender discrimination where we can be proud of our works, not of our gender. The spark I've noticed in the eyes of participants makes me believe that the day is coming.

I would love to share some snapshots from that event.

The panelists

AUW IT Club president is giving her speech

Convener and program coordinator Fahria Kabir

And the video footage is taken from youtube.

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