ITU ARea Office for CIS: Regional Videoconference Seminar dedicated to the International Girls in ICT Day

4/26/2017

CIS, Russia, Moscow, Russia

The ITU Reginal Videoconference Seminar dedicated to the International Girls in ICT Day was held in Moscow, in the ITU Area Office for CIS, on 27 April 2017.

The event was attended by 60 participants (including 50 remote participants), representing 6 CIS countries (Republic of Azerbaijan, Kyrgyz Republic, Republic of Moldova, Russia, Republic of Uzbekistan, and Ukraine), as well as the International Communication Academy and International Telecommunication Union.

The main objective of the seminar was to discuss preliminary results of the implementation of the initiative known as Girls in ICT Day, which is celebrated each year on fourth Thursday of April, and its further development at the regional level. This objective was highlighted in the greeting addressed to the event participants by Farid Nakhli, Programme Officer, ITU Area Office for CIS. Within the frameworks of the official opening, the ITU also delivered the video address Brahima Sanou, BDT Director, dedicated to the Girls in ICT Day, as well as presentation Why Do We Need Girls in ICT Day? and presented a new website Girls in ICT.

Within the frameworks of Session 1, Ms. Eleonora Vasilachi, Head, Directorate of Polices Analysis, Monitoring and Evaluation, Ministry of Information Technology and Communications of the Republic of Moldova, presented the provisional results of the implementation of the Girls in ICT initiative in the Republic of Moldova, while Ms. Zhamila Berdieva, Leading Strategy Specialist, Ministry for Development of Information Technologies and Communications of the Republic of Uzbekistan presented the role of women in the development of ICT in the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Eleonora Vasilachi, noting traditionally strength positions of Moldovan women in the spheres such as education, health and culture (proportion of women is over 50%), found a more than 10-percent increase of the proportion of women in e-communications over recent 5 years (from 31.8% to 43.1%), that, according to Ms. Vasilachi, is in large part is a result of the active work of the government in this field. In particular, the government awards scholarships Internet technology studies and supports traditional professional orientation events, such as doors open days, campaigns to promote ICT professional careers and occupation forums. In the meanwhile, girls who go to specialized telecommunication universities mainly select professions such as information technologies (32.9% of total number of female students studying ICT) and IT-management (26.8% of total number of female students studying ICT), while the proportion of female students of other faculties, such as computer networks, informatics, and economic informatics, is significantly lower. While a significant positive development of the initiative aimed at involvement of more women in ICT is, according to Ms. Vasilachi, an obvious increase of proportion of women occupying policy-making positions in ICT enterprises (30% in 2016).

Ms. Zhamila Berdieva noted still quite low proportion of women in total number of employees of ICT enterprises: on the average one third (from 11.5% in UNICOM to 38.6% in UZINFOCOM, centre for development and implementation of computer technologies). The average proportion of girls among students of ICT-specialized colleges and technical schools is 32.4%, while the average proportion of girls among ICT-specialized universities makes from 11.9% in Tashkent University of Information Technologies to 15.7% in Inkha university. According to the speaker, this quite low proportion of women involved in ICT sector is not a result of pure attention the government pays to this issue, but is down to traditional virtues which are preferred by the society to modern western life benchmarks. At the same time, the number of applications to the virtual office of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan from women exceeds by 12% the number of applications from men. The great potential of Uzbekistan women is evidenced by confident victories of girls in competitions such as Technovation Challenge, MIT-Milliy Internet Tanlovi, and Best Soft Challenge.

Within the framework of Session 2 dedicated to professional orientation issues, Ms. Alena Ruslaovskaya from A.S.Popov Odessa National Academy of Telecommunications (ONAT) presented Professional Orientation Project on Influence of 4.0 Economy on Motivation of Female School Graduates Choosing a Profession in the ICT and told of the ONAT profession orientation activities, which includes in particular revealing and education of gifted childes, pre-profile preparation of school children with consideration of their individual characteristics, motivation of school girls to choose an ICT profession. The above best practices formed a basis for the project proposed for implementation within the framework of a CIS regional initiative. Ms. Rusalovskaya also shared information on broadening opportunities of women to get an education in ICT: now, new forms of education are available such as e-learning, short-term courses.

Professional orientation activities of the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications (IET) under Kyrgyz State Technical University named after Iskhak Razzakov was covered by a presentation delivered by Ms. Elvira Zhenish Kyzy, IET Deputy Director for Academic Affairs. Ms. Zhenish Kyzy told of traditional methods of the professional oriental work and noted an important tool such as involving in the professional orientation process of female students, whose personal experience looks really trustful for the female school graduates, who are practically their herd mates.

Within the frameworks of Session 3 Ms. Sabina Mammadli, Commercial Director, Azertelecom LLC, presented the activities of Femmes Digitales Club, co-founded by her and two other successful businesswomen. The club Femme Digitales was first presented at the last-year Girls in ICT videoconference for CIS. The founders of the club see their objective in motivating women and girls to choose professions in the ICT using as example their own success experience and inspiring women, who often refuse from professional career due to traditionalism, to unlock their creative potential. Supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the club organizes professional orientation events in schools and helps those women who would like to change their profession to an ICT-specialized one, make efforts to connect employers and potential employees, as well as organizes different competitions among women, such as Start-up of the Year; Teacher of the Year; Woman in ICT of the Year.

Professional orientation activities, which is carried out in Ulyanovsk Region (Russia) was presented by Ms. Elena Yamkina, Deputy Director for ICT, Secondary School # 37, who participated in the seminar remotely amont other representatives of the Electronic Ulyanovsk corporation. Ms. Yamkina drew attention of the participants to a great number of ICT-specialized professions for girls, noting that the high interest of school girls in ICT is evidenced by the fact that quite many of them choose informatics as a school subject for Unified State Exam. This interest is in large part caused by the professional orientation organized in Ulyanovsk Region with the support of Internet Technology Development Foundation, which starts with 5^th school year. In the period from middle of March to middle of April, more than 700 girls took part in the professional orientation events.

Further development of the Girls in ICT initiative was discussed at the roundtable. 

Ms. Gulnara Abdyllayeva, Director, IET under KSTU named after Iskhak Razzakov suggested to publish all Girls in ICT related information on a special web-site. This would be illustrative of the CIS region activities. Ms. Abdyllayeva also supported the initiative to promote Femme Digitales at the regional level, noting the importance of issues, such as measuring of digital development of the countries, involvement of girls in the process of ICT development, digital transformation of economy, professional development of female specialists in other ICT-related spheres, such as telemedicine. Ms. Abdyllayeva also noted, that ICT are necessary for all women irrespective of their profession.

Eleonora Vasilachi supported the idea of creation of a special platform to present information of the Girls in ICT initiative development the year round referring to a great number of Girsl in ICT related events organized during the year in cooperation with other partners, such as UNAIDS, UN Women.

Sabina Mammadli expressed interest of the Femmes Digitales in becoming an ITU member and its willingness to host next regional Girls in ICT event with participation of different countries. This would also promote the Femmes Digitales brand.

Elvira Zhenizh Kyzy noted the importance of acquaintance of girls, to involve them in ICT, with ideas of successful ICT female professionals. According to Ms. Zhenish Kyzy, some measures would further attraction of girls in ICT, such as: academic mobility, sharing of experiences and exchange of students between universities, training of professors. Ms. Zhenish Kyzy also suggested to create a group by correspondence to promote Girls in ICT initiative and supported the idea of Sabina Mammadli to organize a Girls in ICT event in the region.

Natalya Efimova, Advisor to the President, International Communication Academy (ICA), told of the ICA activities aimed at promotion of ICT professions among girls: in particular, the ICA implements projects in the field of cybersecurity, organized a youth competition, and the most of laureates were girls. Ms. Efimova also noted the importance of promotion of career opportunities in ICT through success stories (Eun-Ju Kim, Anastasiya Ositis, Irina Fedulova, Head of ASVT company, where 4/5 of the staff are women), as well as of allocation of schools to ICT-specialized universities and of so-called “spot” professional orientation.

Gulnara Abdrakhmanova, Director, Information Society Statistics and Monitoring Centre, Higher School of Economics (HSE), noted, that considering the importance of the ICT sector, the Higher School of Economics created new departments and institutes specialized in electronics, informatics, business informatics; following the development of cooperation between ICT-specialized universities and major ICT companies, successful companies, such as Yandex, created their own lecture desks in in the HSE. According to Ms. Abdrakhmanova, for some CIS countries, in particular for Russia, the gender issues are less important, than the quality of education, maintenance of all achievements of the soviet school.

Elena Yamkina was on board with Gulnara Abdrakhmanova that gender issue is contrived for Russia, because IT companies willingly employ women. Ms. Yamkina told of career opportunity fairs in Ulyanovsk region attended by different stakeholders, which present numerous opportunities for child professional orientation and help parents to choose a school for children: in particular, Information Technology Development Fund, Europe television centre. The latter makes no difference in professional orientation of girls and boys.

Summing up the results of the roundtable discussion, the participants considered as necessary and appropriate to:

Promote on a special website activities and achievements of CIS countries in involving women in ICT;

Promote the Femmes Digitales brand in the region and in the world and facilitate it to become an ITU member;

Organize next Girls in ICT regional event somewhere in the region, as an option – in Baku, in cooperation with the Femmes Digitales.