EMPOWERING FEMALES IN THE TECH SPACE; KEY TO NARROWING THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP IN STEM

Over the years, there has been tremendous progress in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). However, there continues to be an underrepresentation of women in STEM, especially in the Nigerian tech space. This article seeks to examine ways individuals, organizations, and communities can change this narrative for women, through empowerment programs and schemes, so as to produce an environment where creativity, talent, and ability to innovate is not gendered biased.

The tons of reasons behind the underrepresentation of women in the tech industry, especially in Nigeria include; Inability to access useful information, gender biases, ingrained personal biases, cultural biases, fear of sexual harassment, stereotype threats, lack of structure (time, location and illiteracy) amongst others.

It becomes imperative to find solutions to these challenges because every year, just 22% of the total number of engineering and technology graduates are women, despite the fact that they make up half of the entire population. In this regard, leveling the playing field for women in STEM is an essential strategy for boosting the productivity of the nation since the global marketplace is now increasingly driven by technology.

Although, there are some non-profit organizations working out initiatives to solve many of these problems, currently, Nigeria is still ranked 128th out of 153 countries in the 2020 Global Gender Gap Report and as seen from the figures, Nigeria needs to do a lot more so as to bridge the gender gap in tech space.

Hence, there is a dire need and urgent call for more organizations and individual collaborations whose focus would be to create programs that will help bridge the knowledge gap in women, especially youngsters in STEM through technology-based training, technology-based clubs, and workshops at both secondary and tertiary levels.

These youngsters need to be mentored through practical exercises including but not limited to encryption, fraud detection, data analysis, digital convergence, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. Subsequently, these programs should emphasize important soft-skills of collaboration, creativity, and communication, to enable the application of the acquired technical skills to solve real-life challenges.

Furthermore, stakeholders in relevant organizations should deliberately work on raising entrepreneurs and creating job opportunities for women in tech, even for those in local communities.

Finally, research has revealed that the most effective methods of problem-solving come from collaborating with individuals from different backgrounds, gender, race, and ethnicity. Women are a world of untapped potentials; therefore, communities, tech stakeholders, and institutions are needed now more than ever to rise to the challenge of empowering women. Until this is done, the tech space will continue to lack enough women, and this imbalance might ultimately have a boomerang effect on the economy of the nation.

Author: Ariyo Esther

Editor: Olanrewaju Funke; Olasunkanmi Oyolola

SWIS Africa is an initiative focused on celebrating and shaping women in STEM in Africa. You can learn more about us by clicking this link.