During a webinar organized jointly by Huawei and Reuters, programmers and executives from different digital companies worldwide agreed that the number of women in technology and leadership roles has increased; however, they have not noticed a great growth in the representation of women in percentage terms.
According to Alaina Percival, executive director and co-founder of Women Who Code, a US-based non-profit, non-governmental organization, “one of the key things we have learned is that radical transformation is possible, and that it is possible for all of us.”
She highlighted the need for “businesses, industries and governments to continue building and thinking about how to design to achieve inclusion by increasing opportunities for women throughout the industry” by pointing out that “inclusion is not by desire, it is by design.
For her part, Isabelle Mauro, director and head of information, communications and technology industries at the World Economic Forum, stated that women continue to be underrepresented in the “jobs of the future”, which are mostly jobs related to the digital sector, which will shape the future of our lives.
Women are estimated to make up just 14 percent of the workforce in cloud computing, 20 percent in engineering, and slightly more in data and artificial intelligence, respectively.
Likewise, Afke Schaart, Huawei’s vice president of public affairs, reported that the world’s leading Chinese telecommunications company has launched a series of initiatives aimed at preparing young talents in the digital sector, such as Seeds for the Future, ICT Academy and Global ICT Contest.
“We see ourselves playing an important role in enabling and inspiring more women to join the technology sector, as we are an important partner for digitization in this region,” she commented. “The good thing is that we have been committed to initiatives, some of which have been going on for a long time. We started the Seeds for the Future program in 2008 and it continues to grow.”
In Latin America and the Caribbean, Huawei has implemented its Seeds for the Future program since 2014, first in Colombia, and later expanded to cover most countries in the region.
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