#Ilooklikeanengineer campaign exposes need for diversity in tech

In a recent post, I shared that CI&T, Google and the International Trade Center (ITC), are leading the Women Vendors’ Forum and Exhibition (WVEF) Tech Challenge 2015. We are passionate about cultivating female leaders inside our own organization, as well as in others, and are excited to see the ideas come out of this event that will help facilitate communication between corporations and women-owned businesses, especially those from developing countries.

This partnership with Google and the ITC is an extension of CI&T’s on-going commitment to promoting diversity in the workforce and the professional development of women. Needless to say, when the #Ilooklikeanengineer hashtag went viral, we were thrilled! Finally a high-profile conversation about diversity in technology that isn’t theoretical, but fact-based and in real-time. Some of our own talented female collaborators joined the conversation as well.

As powerful as this campaign has been, the challenge now is for organizations to keep the conversation going. The first step is to continue this momentum and promote diversity in the ranks across all organizations. There are so many ways to do this, and audiences to appeal too.

The most talked about audience is young girls. We need to instill a passion for technology in them at an early age, and the best way to do this is by introducing them to code. Too often these skills aren’t taught in schools, or at least not the extent necessary, so enterprises like CI&T must help promote this type of education. One idea we are exploring is hosting workshops and learning sessions to show the power of technology, teach the basics of code, and perhaps most importantly, connect these skills to a story to which they can relate.

There is another audience we need to appeal to as well and that is the working professional woman. Educating young people is imperative, but let’s not forget the talented individuals who are already in the workforce who need the support and skills to get closer to a career in technology. And plus, these women can make a difference now! There could be similar workshops for this audience, and women-focused hackathons. While CI&T is committed to engaging women inside our organization for both internal initiatives and external communities, our true, overarching goal is not to separate women and men, but rather unify them.

The conversation around #Ilooklikeanengineer makes two things very clear - we’ve come so far, but there is so far to go! Together, enterprises and individuals alike, can keep this conversation vibrant and exciting by hosting engagements and promoting ideas to bring real strides and hopefully reduce the bias that ignited this campaign, in the future.  

This post originally appeared here: https://www.ciandt.com/card/ilooklikean-engineer