A project aimed at promoting gender equality in the scientific field
“Thinking about technology means thinking about the world. It will be fantastic if the girls will also create it! "
The Girls Code It Better project is an orientation and training initiative created to bring the world of women ever closer to technology, in an attempt to break down cultural prejudices on gender diversity. Conceived and developed by the project manager Costanza Turrini together with Officina Futuro Fondazione W Group, Girls Code It Better is a set of workshops made up of heterogeneous groups of girls from secondary schools of I and II, real "clubs ”Led by a Teaching Coach, who supports the girls during the project and group work phases, and by a Coach Maker, who shows the girls the potential of technologies and brings them closer to the world of creation. The first edition of the Women in Digital Scoreboard, an annual evaluation index launched by the European Commission, shows that Italy is in fourth-last place in the European ranking that monitors female participation in the digital economy. "Women represent 52% of the European population - observes Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner - but only 17% of them work in areas related to ICT, so we must unlock the potential of women in boosting the digital economy".
Unfortunately, the scenario worsens if we consider STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) employment in Italy: only 14.8% of ICT specialists are women, an evidence that is out of place if we consider that 59.2 % of Italian graduates are women.
Girls Code It Better wants to reverse this trend. Now in its eighth edition, over the years the project has been able to involve about 6,000 female students and almost 200 Italian schools in over 13 regions, with laboratories in five different areas: "Electronics and automation", "Digital manufacturing, modeling and 3D printing "," Web design and web development "," App and Gaming development "and" Augmented and virtual reality ".
Each Girls Code It Better student club provides a training workshop in each school, involved in a course of about 4 months (for a total of 45 hours) of afternoon extracurricular meetings: always supported by the Teaching Coach and the Coach Maker, the young students address a theme and product development in one of the five technological fields. The project aims to bring girls closer to languages and new digital skills in a creative and fun way, in such a way as to enable them to understand, create and consciously use the web and information technologies and encourage them to undertake study and scientific career paths. technology or to enhance their training with skills that are essential today. This is because the occupational choices reflect the school path undertaken since adolescence.
The initiative counts on the collaboration of SEW-EURODRIVE Italia which, as an official partner, has supported the project since its inception to facilitate the overcoming of unnecessary stereotypes and to promote STEM subjects among Italian students. SEW-EURODRIVE develops technological solutions for industrial, logistics and process automation for the main industrial sectors, and is constantly committed to advancing the industrial, social and economic ecosystem while protecting the environment and future generations. It is important to make a concrete contribution to overcoming the prejudices that often distort reality, starting from an equal and sustainable development of the social fabric, in the training and work environment, daily renewing one's commitment to the creation of a sustainable, inclusive, full of equals future, opportunity and attentive to the respect of each individual.
