Women in the workforce today face a number of challenges and pressures that make their experience unique. For women working in IT, that includes being outnumbered almost 3 to 1. And yet, the IT industry and computer related roles offer many of the benefits and flexibility that women seek.
According to recent statistics, women hold 51% of positions in the workforce today, but only about 26% of positions in IT. Since 1985 the number of women receiving degrees in computer science has fallen from 37% to 18%.
As a woman, this is particularly frustrating, as the IT industry and IBM have provided me with a number of opportunities for success and development that are not available elsewhere. And there are so many other women who have been able to achieve success as well.
And with the advances in cloud, mobile and social, many of the barriers to create our own opportunities are being removed. Women are playing pivotal roles in startups as leaders, developers and decision makers.
With this in mind, IBM has developed our Bluemix Girls’ Night Out events. These events offer women opportunities for career mentoring and include a focus on enabling them on best practices for cloud-based development using PaaS such as IBM’s Bluemix platform.
Girls’ Night Out is meant to give women of all levels of experience and knowledge a place to come together to support each other, and help spur creativity and community. We are looking to partner with other local organizations to help host and execute them.
And in NYC, we are hosting a Bluemix Girls’ Night Out partnering with Digital.NYC to bring this program to their members on October 22, at our facilities at 590 Madison Avenue.
Our goal is to help foster the next generation of women developers, leaders and entrepreneurs, Because our industry needs the talent and ideas to spur the next generation of technology to advance and change our business and lives.
And we have already seen the impact that these types of events can have. When you bring a group of talented women together, and empower them with support and knowledge the impact is almost immediate. And it only strengthens the communities, businesses and teams which they are a part of.
If you are interested in hosting, partnering or participating in one of these events, please let us know. We look forward to meeting the next generation of leaders, innovators and developers.
