To all the amazing women and men out there, let’s celebrate International Women's Day together on March 8th!
Officialized by the United Nations in 1977, International Women's Day finds its origin in the struggles of women workers and suffragettes in the early 20th century. It was in 1910, during the International Conference of Socialist Women, gathering 100 women from 17 countries in Copenhagen, that a consensus was reached on the need for an international women-dedicated day. It seems to be the first statement calling for a multi-country movement.
Each year, a theme is defined by the United Nations. In 2023, the theme “For an inclusive digital world: innovation and technologies for gender equality” is associated with the priority theme of the 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women ("Innovation, technological change and education in the digital age to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.").
Women hold only 2 out of 10 jobs in science, engineering and ICT worldwide and 22% of AI jobs. According to the UN report, “the exclusion of women from the digital world has reduced the gross domestic product of low and middle income countries by $1 trillion over the past decade. Without action, this loss could reach $1.5 billion by 2025.” These are alarming predictions, showing that the path towards equality remains far from over. The need for an inclusive technological world and digital education is crucial for a sustainable future.
While 73% of our clients are male-gendered teams, at Starts Consulting; we are a 100% women team and believe in business opportunities’ equality and a rich complementarity in the business approach. On this day, we could have talked about our (sometimes challenging) experience navigating through the tech industry as female individuals but instead, we want to celebrate our peers and complementarity with both genders' partners and clients. While navigating through cross-country projects and teams, we learnt to embrace and spread compassion and kindness at work thanks to our differences.
My first job’s female mentor raised a point that stayed with me throughout my career; The fact that I did not need to keep squaring my work (figuratively) and overall marketing design style (literally) to fit in a tech environment. She noticed I felt reserved and uneasy to embrace my feminine side at work sometimes and encouraged me to do so. Owning your style while making sure you remain competent in your expertise makes the strongest case. I made sure to keep rounding my angles the way I wanted in my writing, content and design to suit my personality and style after that. She is one of the wonderful women entrepreneurs I am grateful to have come across in my work life.
To junior women workers; Keep testing and learning with new projects to reach the job that drives your work passion every day. It also is the best way to feel equipped and to stay unshakable while encountering challenges on the way.
To a happy international women’s career day!