Working Together for an Internet for Women

How can we get more girls and young women involved in the Internet?

Since 2017, the Internet Society’s Women SIG has developed global actions to promote gender equality and to develop digital skills and leadership among girls and young women.

With the support of several Chapters of the Internet Society, we’ve organized global face-to-face and virtual events on security and privacy issues focused on girls and women. But this work can’t be done alone, which is why we’ve promoted collaboration within organizations, government, civil society, companies, academia, and the technical community to organize events that have a positive impact on the Internet community. (We also collaborate with EQUALS Global Partnership.)

This year, to commemorate the International Day of Girls in ICT, promoted by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which aims to reduce the digital gender gap and to encourage and motivate girls to participate in tech careers, we organized a series of workshops focused on digital skills for girls. The main node was organized in conjunction with the Internet Society Chapter in Guatemala and the Spain Cultural Center in Guatemala.

We also had a global celebration in El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Honduras, Hong Kong, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Armenia, Continue reading

Global Editathon: Making Women in Tech Visible

Why is it necessary to “edit” the biographies of women who are doing an incredible job on issues of technology and the Internet? Simple: the contributions of these women do not have visibility on the Internet.

At many Internet Governance forums, we often highlight the contributions of the founding fathers, but how do we inspire girls to join ICTs – information and communication technologies – if we never mention women?

For this year’s International Girls in ICT Day, the Internet Society’s Special Interest Group for Women organized the 1st Global Editathon Girls in ICT. With the support of Chapters and organizations from all around the world, this initiative had a clear goal: to create local content written about and by women to make their work in technology visible.

Read about the Editathon on Twitter!

Only 17% of the Wikipedia content is about women and approximately 8.8% of the content in Wikipedia in Spanish is about women scientists. Where are those women who make a difference in science and technology? Do they exist? Of course they do!

This Girls in ICT Day, Let’s Increase the Visibility of Women on Wikipedia

At the Women’s Special Interest Group of the Internet Society we are committed to promoting the participation of women in the Internet ecosystem. We also consider it important to increase the content created by and about women on the Internet to give voice and make visible the actions, work, and participation of women in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

Just 17% of Wikipedia biographies are of women. This happens because of the invisibility on the Internet of their work, which makes it difficult to create their biographies, no matter how valuable their work is.

April 26 is the International Day of Girls in ICT, promoted by the ITU. It aims to reduce the digital gender gap and encourage and motivate girls to participate in tech careers. With the support of the Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Society Chapters, we are going to commemorate the Girls in ICT Day with an editathon marathon in Wikipedia, to include all the women who are working to build an open Internet, free, safe, transparent, and affordable for everyone.

The important thing about this Global Editathon “Girls in ICT” is that the content will be created by women in their native language or in the Continue reading

Help Make the Internet Open to All: Join SIG Women!

When we talk about women and technology, we need to talk data. In the United States, a recent report by the National Center for Women and Information Technology highlighted that only 26% of the workforce in the computer field is made up of women. In addition, a survey by Silicon Valley Bank revealed that 68% of startups do not have women on their board. In India, women make up just 30% of the workforce in the technology industry. In many European countries, the wage gap between men and women is present in technological positions. In Latin America, the proportion of women studying in computer careers is low. In addition, shortcomings in Internet access makes it difficult for women of all ages to use the technology in Africa.

Increasing access, skills, and leadership of women and girls in ICT has enormous potential for improving their health and emancipating them through access to information, education and trade opportunities, strengthening not only families and communities, but also national economies and global society as a whole.

In order to speak on a daily basis and to make the problem visible, we considered it necessary to create a Special Interest Group to help change those statistics Continue reading