I participated in a panel about Girls in ICT at ITU World Telecom on October 27 2011 chaired by Brahima Sanou, Director of ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau and learned this:
Job opportunities in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) continue to grow, and many countries and regions are predicting a shortage of qualified staff with math, science, engineering and computing skills to meet the growing demand. At the same time, many companies are looking to increase the number of women in the sector. This means that highly qualified women in technical fields have significant opportunities available to them. Unfortunately teenage girls and young women often never even consider a career in ICTs. There is a lack of awareness among students, teachers and parents on the opportunities presented by a career in ICT.
Former US FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate was present in the audience at this session and called out a program that she and actress Geena Davis are engaged in regarding Gender and Media. Greena Davis was featured in the film Miss Representation, which explores how the media’s misrepresentation of women has led to the underrepresentation of women in positions of power and influence.
This makes it that much more important to make sure girls and young women are aware of the resources available to help them prepare for and enter the ICT sector. Check out The Girls in ICT portal, which provides listings for scholarships, internship and training opportunities, tech camps, Girls in ICT Day events, online networks and so much more! Check it out and spread the word!
So now you must be wondering where is Cisco in this space?
In May 2011 Cisco France set up a connected girls day that included members from the industry and conducted workshops on technology and its applicability to society. Take a look at the following video to experience the event:
On September 25, 2008, Cisco hosted its first worldwide Connected Women event, demonstrating collaboration in business. Live events ran in 9 cities across the world with more than 400 senior female customers and partners coming together for a series of stimulating and practical presentations centred on collaboration, sustainability and the importance of technology. The opportunity to ‘Inspire and be inspired’ was a theme throughout with contributions from high -- level external business speakers at the different events around the world.
Cisco will be running the next Connected Women event in April 2012. By running this event we intend to both inspire our guests and for them to in turn provide inspiration through the sharing of their personal successes and innovative practices. The April event, like previous sessions, will be a real testament to what we can all achieve through greater collaboration.
Cisco’s Senior Vice President, Kathy Hill, is in Portland, Oregon at the Grace Hopper Women in Computing Conference this week speaking at the technical executive forum on November 10 2011.
Over 6,500 top-level participants onsite including Heads of State and Government, Ministers, city mayors, industry CEOs and technology gurus, along with hundreds of thousands of participants from around the world interacting in real-time via webcasts and twitter streams
332 global leaders participating in the Broadband Leadership Summit
34 of the world’s major ICT names participating in the event as key partners
251 influential speakers from 64 countries took part in the multi-streamed conference agenda
237 companies from 41 countries on the show floors
10,000 students from schools across the globe, who shared their work with 150,000 of their classmates across five continents.
Session was chaired by Brahima Sanou Director, ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau
*There were more attendees at this session than at the Internet of Things Session including:
Former US FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate called out the program that she and actress Geena Davis are engaged in regarding Gender and Media:
Please keep an eye out for the next blog on the Girls in ICT Portal ITU will go live 11.11.2011. Susan Schoor ITU BDT Regulatory and Market Environment Division, extended a warm thanks to the panelists.
The next ITU Telecom World event will be held in Dubai, UAE, in Q4 of 2012.
Thirty thousand feet above Iraq, an hour out from Qatar and the Persian Gulf – a good place to look back on this week’s third annual WISE, the World Innovation Summit for Education. It is, bar none, the biggest education conversation on earth. It has the power to convene: the world’s leading educators implored the world’s governments to honor the 2015 Millennium Education goals. In my opinion, although WISE has done significant work in the past few years there is still a lot to be done to create a coherent, systematic approach to education transformation. Qatar and the Region as a whole need that desperately. Arab leaders know they have to create 75M jobs - to sustain growth and meet the aspirations of countless young people. That means building a generation of problem-solvers and entrepreneurs. The precondition is better education.
WISE is pinning its hopes on new and innovative forms of learning – finding them, promoting them and scaling them. Charlie Leadbeater’s brilliant book on learning innovation was unveiled here this week. The Haiti learning initiative, built around inspirational new approaches to education, was launched with the WISE imprimatur. And innovative projects – from Afghan photography to smart-funded academies in America -- were hailed as game changers.
Healthcare is transforming rapidly thanks to advances in technology and people working together. This evolution was obvious in Jordan last week, when the inaugural meeting of the country’s Healthcare ICT Task Force took place in conjunction with the World Economic Forum Jordan.
The task force is a collaboration between the King Abdullah II Fund for Development, the Information Technology Association of Jordan (inj@j), and Cisco, and it points to the country’s vision to become a regional hub for ICT solutions in the healthcare sector. Read More »
The World Innovation Summit for Education(WISE) is an initiative of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development. Launched in 2009, WISE is an international initiative and platform for a multitude of established and new educational actors to collaborate proactively all year round. There will be 1200 attendees from 45 countries, including greater than 25 country-level Ministers of Education in attendance at this Qatar meeting discussing potential global and regional impacts on teaching and learning. At the Wise Summit in Doha, Qatar, November 1-3, Cisco is one of only two major technology companies presenting at the conference. Another great visibility opportunity for Cisco in helping “transform Education, together.”
On November 1st, I will be speaking and moderating a session on “Adapting to the Future World of Work” Session: Adapting-future-world-work at the Wise summit in Qatar. In this session, the panel and I will explore ways in which education, business, social and government leaders in different regions might work together more effectively to address them. Learn more about related topics in the Equipping Every Learner for the 21st Century White Paper
