Happy International Day of the Girl Child. Around the world people continue to work to create improved gender equality and to increase the opportunities for girls and women. This is a day dedicated to goal 5 of the United Nations sustainable Global Goals: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. However, things are not moving forward as quickly we would all like. According to the UN:
Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. There has been progress over the last decades, but the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030. Women and girls represent half of the world’s population and therefore also half of its potential. But gender inequality persists everywhere and stagnates social progress.
Tackling gender inequality is at the heart of what we do at TECgirls. So we worked hard to think of what we could do to celebrate this day. While a social media post is a great way to show solidarity, it isn't likely going to make an impact. And we are all about impact.
So we read through the UN's own report on "Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls." It is a very interesting read, with lots of suggestions on how improvements can be made. There were a few things that stood out to us:
Provide career orientation and recruitment initiatives by providing insights into technology education and technology-driven occupations
Tackle gender stereotypes that women and girls are not interested in technology
Expand initiatives to combat gender stereotypes in STEM professions to also focus on topics that respond to current and future societal challenges
These aligned perfectly with our own core aims as an organisation and helped us realise something we could do to help. A poster!
A Poster?
That's right. A free to download poster that shows off some of the new and exciting technology, engineering and creative careers. Now these careers are open to all people, but we created the poster to clearly aim it at girls.
And we would like to give it away to anyone who feels it will help to inspire and excite girls. So you can download your own copy of our poster here.
Please feel free to share and let us know if you are using this and how it is working! Tag us in to any social posts, we'd love to see it up in classrooms across the UK!