Women, technology and employment

One of the sectors that currently requires the most workers in Latin America, is the ICT sector. However, the professional's supply in the area has not been sufficient to satisfy the sector's demand. This represents a great opportunity to generate employment and our intention is to take advantage of it by training low-income or vulnerable women in areas such as web development and programming. With this we have a double objective:

A) First, to provide women all around the region, tools that give a very high rate of employability, which also represents an opportunity for economic empowerment and improvement of their quality of life.

B) Second, contribute to reducing the gender gap in the region among STEM workers, which according to data released by the World Bank in 2017 is 40% in Latin America. In consequence, only 3 out of 10 science, mathematics, engineering and technology workers are women.

According to the figures released by the Inter-American Development Bank in LAC, only 30% of graduates in STEM disciplines are women, and in the area of information and communication technologies, women only represent 28% of graduates. Only 3 out of 10 workers in the area of mathematics and computer science are women, and the women who find work in these areas receive a salary 40% lower than the men employed in the same areas.

This educational and occupational segregation causes women to lag behind men in the use of digital cognitive skills for the use of technologies and in employment in technological sectors, which in turn implies a risk of exclusion of potential benefits of technological innovation.

Investing in training in STEM disciplines and digital literacy for women not only contributes to reducing the STEM gender gap and its risks of exclusion in the digital age, but also contributes to reducing the gender labor gap in general, to the eradication of poverty, inclusive economic growth and the improvement of working conditions for women in LAC and their access to economic resources as established in the fifth objective of sustainable development.

Our solution is to scale our virtual training program focused mainly on low-income women throughout the region between 18 and 24 years of age. The initiative proposed here consists of 3 fundamental axes:

1. Technical training in Programming and Web Development:

The program consists of 400 hours of intensive and comprehensive training distributed in 9 months and taught in the Bootcamp modality, with a theoretical-practical methodology that is based on "learning by programming."

2. Training in Soft Skills.

From the last weeks of classes, the students are accompanied with workshops that allow them to obtain the tools to be able to perform successfully in their job search, such as communication, problem solving, responsibility, self-motivation and a tendency to innovation and continuous improvement.

3. Support in Labor Insertion

We carry out the entire accompaniment process for the search for the first job, which includes the guide for the design of the CV, the preparation of the interview, the construction of the LinkedIn profile, invitations to hackathons, etc. This work, which includes meetings with companies, follow-up with the student, is carried out through remote tools, so it can be quickly replicated in any country in the region.

Our goal is to expand our capacity and reach to reach a greater number of women between 18 and 24 years of age throughout the region with our online training program, especially those with limited resources that are starting or about to start. start your working life.

With this training, we intend to offer benefited women the possibility of obtaining a formal and well-paid job, which implies the possibility of accessing social security and their own economic resources. Among the direct benefits of these are the following:

• Women who participate in training can access better working conditions, remuneration, greater employability and a better quality of life.

• Women who have access to improved economic resources in their ability to negotiate at home, in matters that affect their own lives and / or that of their children.

• Economic power allows women to make strategic life decisions, such as postponing the age at which they marry and have children.

• The economic empowerment of women protected from gender violence, since it is more likely to occur when the woman is in a position of dependency and has limited options in terms of remaining or ending the relationship

Our goal is to provide young women with a real and effective opportunity to improve their job profile and get a formal job that allows them to achieve economic self-sufficiency and social security, through the training of technological skills, soft skills, and support in the job searching. This is in fact literally what the second dimension of the Challenge seeks: to strengthen STEM competencies to achieve an effective transition from education to employment.

So far, the results have been quite successful and we hope to be able to replicate and expand them throughout the region, for which we need financing.

We consider our solution as innovative because we combine technical and soft skills that come from the agile methodologies. During this 'new normality' most of the organization realize the importance of having a flexible team but also a team with an agile mindset. This mindset provides people to think out of the box and find new and innovative solutions, learning fast from their errors and mistakes, and creating solutions for real problems.

Our solution can be executed through video conference software, such as Zoom, Google Meet, or any other similar, or through an LMS platform.

We estimate a team of between 5 and 10 people. It will depend on the number of trainers we will need to cover all the student's demands.

Because as an organization we have been working on this project for 4 years and so far the results have been successful, we have managed to obtain an employability rate of 80% and we have built a business support network to achieve effective job insertion. The testimonies of our graduates are gratifying and in many cases they declare having achieved a substantial improvement in their quality of life thanks to having managed to obtain a better job.

We have enough experience and we have a multidisciplinary, multicultural and super committed team that is well known in the region among the Latin American agile and software development communities.

In carrying out this project, we work together with Kubadili, a civil society organization founded in 2017 that through innovation, and the use and implementation of agile methodologies, seeks to strengthen and develop other civil society organizations. This alliance is facilitated by the fact that the two organizations are members and intra-enterprises of Civic House, the incubator and accelerator of organizations in Latin America, that generate impact through technology and civic innovation, in addition to having strong models of financial sustainability.

ADA is the organization in charge of training in technical skills, for which it has developed its own program, methodology and platform with a team of professionals who are experts in the area of technology. For its part, Kubadili has a team of experts in charge of developing agile methodologies and soft skills that allow us to:

1. Constantly adapt the training program to the needs of the market as well as improve and strengthen the profile of the students, especially in the second axis of the training project, which consists of training soft skills.

2. Constantly develop, implement and improve strategies that allow us to improve our sustainability model, our capabilities and scalability.

Currently both ADA and Kubadili have self-sustainable management models, with 72% and 73% respectively of their own income that provide the provision of services or private donations, allowing these organizations to finance the project when necessary; And we could also get sponsors from technology companies interested in training more women.

Our Self-sustainability model is based on 2 strategies:

1. The deferment of the payment of the graduates: the women who participate in their program, can choose to pay the total of the training when they attend or they can choose to pay part of the training. Once they get a job in the tech industry, graduates must pay the cost of training.

2. Provision of commercial services to companies interested in improving their processes or strengthening the capabilities of their employees.

The rest of the resources necessary to finance working capital are obtained from company donations and international cooperation funds.

We are currently in search of funds that allow us to scale up our project in order to reach a greater number of communities and women throughout the Latin American region, especially those in conditions of vulnerability or poverty, such as migrants and refugees, for whom it is necessary to provide the possibility of accessing this type of opportunity through aid or subsidies, which require a large investment. Additionally, scaling our initiative requires investing in expanding the virtual platform, business networks and teaching and support staff.

The initiative presented here consists of promoting the education of young Latin American women in the area of technology with the main objective of providing women with a tool that allows them to access formal and well-paid work in a labor sector with a high employability rate, which in turn contributes to the reduction of the gender gap in STEM, to economic empowerment, independence and improvement of the quality of life of our graduates.

 
The funds obtained to finance this project are required to be able to scale its reach towards a greater number of women, especially those in a vulnerable or poor condition, such as migrants and refugees, for which it is necessary to provide the possibility of accessing this type of opportunity. through aid or subsidies, which require a large investment, while it is necessary to invest in expanding the virtual platform, business contact networks, teaching and support staff.

The initiative presented here consists of promoting the education of young Latin American women in the area of technology with the main objective of providing women with a tool that allows them to access formal and well-paid work in a labor sector with a high employability rate, which in turn contributes to the reduction of the gender gap in STEM, to economic empowerment, independence and improvement of the quality of life of our graduates.
 
The funds obtained to finance this project are required to be able to scale its reach towards a greater number of women, especially those in a vulnerable or poor condition, such as migrants and refugees, for which it is necessary to provide the possibility of accessing this type of opportunity. through aid or subsidies, which require a large investment, while it is necessary to invest in expanding the virtual platform, business contact networks, teaching and support staff.