Women have traditionally opted for subjects in the areas of humanities, health and education while displaying less inclination to apply for purely technical degrees. This is the area in which there are the most differences.
According to data provided by UNESCO, only 30% of women around the world choose university degrees in the scientific and technological fields. In Catalonia, according to the data provided by the 2020 Digital Talent Overview (a programme linked to Mobile World Capital Barcelona), the presence of women in employment in the technological field totals only 8.6%. This publication states that the European averages for positions held by men and women stand at 83.5% and 16.5%.
In 2011, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the organisation of the United Nations specialising in ICT, established International Girls in ICT Day on the fourth Thursday of the month of April to promote female technological vocations, reduce the huge difference between the numbers of men and women in ICT-related professions that still exists today, and reduce the digital divide.
Since 2012 Andorra Telecom has conducted several activities geared towards this goal.
Since 2012, Andorra Telecom has promoted training in robotics and innovation among children and teenagers by means of the First Lego League (FLL) and World Robot Olympiad (WRO), competitions with the aim of fostering activities related to STEAM education (a pedagogical model that groups together the areas of science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) among children and young people in the country.
The proposal we’ll undertake in 2023, through the stories of two woken with a relevant educational background and profession career, will seek to raise the profile and reflect on the value of the presence of women in the field of ICT in building a more diverse and equal society.
Speaker
Marta Bertran Ferrer
Obtained a bachelor’s degree in telematic engineering at La Salle Ramon Llull University (2014-2019). She continued her studies with a master’s degree in cloud and network infrastructures at two leading universities in Europe (the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan in Stockholm and the Aalto University in Helsinki). She began her research in distributed computing at the same time as she finished her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, when she joined the Workflows and Distributed Computing group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
In 2021 she began her master’s degree internship in the calculation grid team of the ALICE experiment, which is being carried out at the Large Hadron Collider of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. She continues to work there while completing her doctorate in partnership with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
In 2021, the Catalan Government presented her with the DonaTIC award in the University Student category to acknowledge the role of women in the world of the new technologies.
Speaker
Elisenda Bou-Balust
Elisenda Bou-Balust is a specialist in artificial intelligence and autonomous learning systems.
An Engineer in Telecommunications (UPC) and Electronics (ULPGC) and Doctor (UPC-MIT), she has founded several startups in the field of applied artificial intelligence, including Vilynx.
She has worked with NASA and the MIT in the field of artificial intelligence applied to satellites, while she also received the prestigious Young Entrepreneur Award in 2018 and, more recently, a Princess of Girona Foundation Award in the Business category.
She currently works for Apple.