A Short Summary of “Girls in IT” First Edition

Last Monday was very exciting. About 100 young women gathered in Monterail’s office to listen to our women experts from different fields—front-end, backend, QA, design, project management, and other roles. During the 2-hour event, we discussed possible career paths in IT industry and real life stories of getting there.

What is the purpose of “Girls in IT”?

“Girls in IT” is aimed at high-school and university female students planning their future. The idea of the event is to help them find their way and validate if IT is a good career for them.

We believe that it is extremely hard to decide on your future when you’re a teenager or a twenty-something woman. Since there is no one way to succeed and no studies guarantee a well-paid job, the only way to find a career one will love is to ask, talk, and try new things. With this initiative, we want to give those women an opportunity to find out if they find themselves in the technology world.

How?

By sharing our own experiences. At Monterail there are almost 20 women who rock their jobs. With their unique stories, they prove there is no one way to become an IT expert, and that there is a place for women in tech companies.

Photo by Marcin Wernecki

“We decided to organize such event because once we were in the same position as you. We were supposed to make a choice we weren’t ready to make and so we understand the struggle.” - said Alina Melnyk, Front-end developer at Monterail and Girls in IT organizer during the opening speech.

Why such initiatives are important

There are many reasons why women empowerment in the IT industry is a must from a business and human perspective. Diversity of any kind in a working place generates creativity, innovation, and unity. As a company, you can encourage such approach in many ways.

We know that some may say “Women in tech is a long-winded subject”. You know what—from a perspective of someone who is not concerned by the problem you may be right. However, for us, and for 100 women who decided to spend their free time listening to our experts, there is still a lot of things that can be done to make women believe that IT is not an elite club for men.

One of our attendees said: “(During the event) Monterail women provided a friendly atmosphere which made me think about IT as something more accessible and egalitarian.”

After the event, we got many questions about labeling in the industry, about gender pay gap, and what working in a man's world is like. It just proves how many women actually want to work in IT, but are frightened away by stereotypes they hear and experience now and then.

Photo by Paweł Hawrylak

To all attendees of “Girls in IT” - big thank you for your presence, kind feedback, and a great time. Expect to hear more from us, as we’re not going to stop after this one event!

The last thing—if you decide on a career in IT, there is one very important sentence we want to leave you with, written by Ann Friedman in Washington Post article:

“The tech industry may have a problem with women, but women don't have a problem with technology.”

If you want to stay updated with upcoming tech-related events, like our Facebook page!

Photos by Marcin Wernecki