Archived Newsroom • Press Release |
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Tech community gears up to celebrate ‘Girls in ICT Day’
around the globe, 23 April 2015
Annual day aims to attract women to field where strong demand
is
creating global skills shortfall
Geneva, 22 April 2015 – Every year on the fourth Thursday in
April, ITU and the global technology community celebrate
‘Girls in ICT Day’, an awareness-raising initiative
designed to promote tech careers and studies to a new generation of girls and
young women.
Launched by ITU in 2010, the day is part of an international drive to
encourage more female students to study STEM subjects – science, technology,
engineering and mathematics – and consider a career in information and
communication technology (ICT).
It aims to counter the chronic global decline in the number of female ICT
students, which is in turn contributing to a predicted global shortfall of at
least two million ICT jobs which will not be able to be filled through lack of
qualified staff.
In OECD countries, female students now account for fewer than 20% of tertiary
ICT enrolments, down from nearly 40% back in the 1980s, when computer science
courses first appeared on university curricula. Only around 3% of total female
graduates study ICT fields, compared with around 10% of male graduates.
This academic gender gap is reflected in the number of female ICT
professionals, now estimated at just 20% across the OECD. In Europe, only 9% of
app developers are female, only 19% of European ICT managers are women (compared
with 45% women managers in other service sectors), and only 19% of ICT
entrepreneurs are women (compared with 54% women in other service sectors),
according to
figures released by the European Commission.
With strong backing from the tech sector and national governments, ‘Girls in
ICT Day’ has rapidly grown into a global movement, with an estimated 3,500
events organized in over 140 countries, reaching 111,000 girls, since the event
became a fixture on the UN calendar five years ago.
ITU expects events in even more countries, reaching even more girls, this
year, and will post information about activities around the world on its
Girls in ICT Portal.
Organizers are invited to contact
girlsinict@itu.int to share information about Girls in ICT Day
celebrations so that event pictures and videos can be included on the portal.
“ICTs are an exciting and rapidly-growing field, offering interesting,
important and well-paid job opportunities,” said ITU Secretary-General Houlin
Zhao. “A career in ICT allows girls to use their creativity, work in
international environments, and participate in shaping our future. With 95% of
all jobs now having a digital component, digital skills are no longer just an
advantage, they’re essential.”
At ITU headquarters, Girls in ICT Day celebrations are this year focused
around an
event for around 115 Geneva school girls, along with a
High-Level Panel debate featuring guest speakers including
Maria Klawe of
Harvey Mudd College in the US, which has achieved exceptional
results in increasing female enrolment in tech studies (intervention by video),
Telle
Whitney, President & CEO of the
Anita Borg Institute, and Judith Owigar,
co-founder & President of AkiraChix in Kenya. The full
programme is available
here, and those who’d like to follow remotely can join the
live webcast
here.
In addition, five special guest schoolgirls, sponsored by the US Mission
(Geneva) and YWCA, and representing Chile, Myanmar, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea
and South Africa, will be joining local schoolgirls for the day’s activities.
Key partners this year include the Novartis Foundation (Principal Sponsor), Lego
Education (Content Partner), and the governments of Finland, Poland and the
United States.
ITU Regional Offices around the world are also actively promoting
Girls in ICT Day 2015, organizing events, partnering with other UN agencies,
supporting organizers in their respective regions and hosting competitions.
Cisco, a major backer of Girls in ICT Day, is organizing events in more than 50
countries, aiming to reach over 3,000 girls, while Microsoft, a long-time
advocate of ICT training through its DigiGirlz programme, is launching its
annual Pink Cloud girls in ICT event on April 23rd as part of Milan’s World
Expo. In ITU’s home country of Switzerland, ICT regulator OFCOM is organizing
its first event at its headquarters in Biel-Bienne, also on April 23rd.
“I invite national governments to consider integrating basic coding skills
into their national education curricula, alongside basics like reading, writing
and arithmetic,” said Brahima Sanou, Director of the ITU Telecommunication
Development Bureau, which organizes the annual event. “Girls and young women who
learn coding, apps development and computer science will have powerful tools at
their disposal to drive economic prosperity for themselves, and overall
socio-economic development for their communities.”
Download a promo film in all six UN languages from ITU’s Virtual Video
Newsroom:
www.itu.int/en/videos/Pages/default.aspx.
Photos from the ITU headquarters event will be available on ITU’s Flickr
site:
www.flickr.com/photos/itupictures/
Follow the discussion around the event on Twitter
#GirlsinICT and Facebook at the ITU Girls in ICT Day page
www.facebook.com/ITUGirlsInICT
For more information, please contact:
Sarah Parkes
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information
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Monica Albertini
Communication Officer, BDT
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