For this special occasion, we were pleased to be joined by the Minister of Equality between Women and Men (MEGA), Taina Bofferding, for an event hosted by Tadaweb in Esch Belval.
After a networking lunch, our team and the 35 participants had the unique opportunity to visit the welcoming offices of Tadaweb, a company co-founded by Genna Elvin, Chief Executive and co-founder. As a female entrepreneur, she introduced the conference with a presentation of her successful company and reminded the audience about the importance of having women in IT and in entrepreneurship.
After the opening speech, Taina Bofferding, Minister of Equality between Women and Men recalled the importance of inspiring and motivating young people, and in particular young girls, to join the world of ICT for more diversity in the tools of tomorrow. She highlighted the example of AI and the problems that have arisen from the lack of women in technical teams.
“Many studies confirm that diversity in the digital professions is not assured. The crucial question to be asked is therefore the reasons behind this obvious discrimination and what remedies exist to quickly achieve more equality and less discrimination in the digital sector.” Taina Bofferding
(Original quote translated from French into English from the Official MEGA Press Release)
After having warmly renewed MEGA’s support for WIDE and its actions, she left the stage to Marina ANDRIEU, Director and co-founder of WIDE.
The conference moved on with an encouraging but realistic intervention from our Managing Director, presenting the results of WIDE’s actions since 2013 and its impact thanks to MEGA’s support since 2016. A mission that will continue with our social enterprise WIDE ANDCO which was created last year. While recalling the importance of women in STEM and ICT professions, she concluded the session with a presentation of the girlsindigital.lu platform, its purpose, functionalities and content.
The girlsIndigital.lu platform aims to give information, offer activities and share experiences from women in tech to inspire girls to benefit from the growth of the digital world and its opportunities allowing for better digital inclusion. Fun activities to learn coding, quiz with interesting facts, testimonies of inspiring female role models in ICT (Information and communication technology) in Luxembourg, opportunities for education in the STEM and digital fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in Luxembourg… The girlsindigital.lu platform is an information point for young people, especially girls, who want to know more about the ICT sector!
Finally, to conclude our event, a time was given to enable the participants to interactively discover some of our activities such as “The Convergent Deck-Building”, a card game entirely designed and created by the WIDE team which allows the players to learn more about the female role models who contributed to the History of STEM, competencies related to STEM subjects as well as gender inequalities.
We would like to thank all our participants and partners for this successful event: women from our network, beneficiaries of our programmes, inspiring women in tech, partners in our activities such as the MEGA, and finally a big thank you to Tadaweb for hosting us and fostering exchange about the future of girls and women in ICT.
Photo credits: Silicon Luxembourg for the picture of Taina Bofferding, Genna Elvin and Marina Andrieu.
