DIGITAL WORLD
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opportunities in games for example. The barriers to entry have become so low,” she said. “We need to stop talking about the problems in being a woman entrepreneur. Men come up against roadblocks too.” Longtime CEO of CPL Heraty emphasised the global nature of the gender gap and recounted how on a recent visit to a Silicon Valley start-up incubator, she was shocked to discover that of the 300 or so start-ups, only five had women founders. She urged the women leaders
present to be proactive in supporting women on their own teams. “We must help and support the women in our own organisations to grow and to think big.” Chatting to delegates after the
event, there was consensus that it was good to have another forum for women leaders to talk about the industry and about technology. “This is an industry of the present
and the future and women need to be part of it and get excited about it,” said Sonya Lennon, co-founder of Frockadvisor. “Because it is one of the most energising zones to be in. It’s about stripping away the fear around what you’re good at because whatever it is you’re good at you can apply that to tech.”
ALL ABOUT EDUCATION The Daily Beast CEO Rhona Murphy said the gathering compared to any such tech conference in the US, and was “incredibly impressive”. “I think it’s about education, about
encouraging girls to be engineers,” she said. “At my parent company IAC we’ve had a programme going all summer called Girls Who Code, bringing college girls and high school graduates in on internships for the summer to teach them to code and stop them being frightened of it and get more familiar with it.” And indeed in Ireland movements like voluntary coding
organisation CoderDojo have led to CoderDojo Girls and CoderDojo Divas, which encourage young girls to get engaged in coding and programming, with the majority of participants later merging back into the general CoderDojos. On the formal education side, Accenture in Ireland is just
completing an important piece of research on the gender gap in the Stem areas in Ireland, as part of its partnership with Silicon Republic’s Women Invent Tomorrow campaign. The campaign is also supported by Intel, ESB International, the Irish Research Council and CoderDojo, and is aimed at championing women role models in the Stem areas. In an attempt to assess why young women make the subject choices they do, young school-goers, recent school leavers, teachers and parents were all surveyed, and the results will be launched in January 2014. It is the first time that such extensive research has been published in Ireland on the gender gap in Stem, and will
Issue 7 Autumn/Winter 2013 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW 51
‘Be authentic. Be yourself. Women have to be women to be successful and be leaders’
PADMASREE WARRIOR, CISCO CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
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