Ukrainian IT entrepreneur Sergey Tokarev has long dealt with gender equality issues in IT. In the column “Ukrainian Pravda”. Life”, she talked about how to overcome the prejudices regarding the equal inclusion of women and girls in technological jobs.

Sergey Tokarev believes that the most effective technological solutions are born in teams whose composition is balanced between the sexes. However, achieving this balance is not easy. Despite the fact that the number of Ukrainian women in IT has tripled in the last decade, less than a quarter are still among IT professionals. And although one out of every three management positions in IT is held by a woman, that’s not enough to talk about equality.

Sergey Tokarev’s invested companies such as Roosh or Reface have long explored gender bias in IT. Examination of this topic shows that girls are faced with misconceptions about their social roles and careers from school. This is where the groundless claim is taught that boys are better suited to technical professions, while girls should focus on the humanities. Statistics say, by contrast, that boys and girls have approximately the same average VNO in math.

Yet if a girl chooses to be accepted into a technical university, the clichés against her do not cease. Why “Looking for a husband in IT?” with “Are you an HR or QA tester?” are ranked among them.

It hurts when a girl already hears the same thing in her specialty. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. In fact, even the issue of maternity leave plans is precisely a form of professional harassment that creates a wall between a woman and her career goals in IT. In such cases, the motivation of girls to engage in IT is lost. As a result of gender inequality in teams.

Sergey Tokarev not only draws attention to the loss of valuable personnel in the industry in this way, but also touches on the regions where personnel starvation is most common. This is cybersecurity, data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

However, she believes that the situation could change if girls are shown from their childhood how promising the IT industry is for their development. To do this, role models need to show bright career examples – women who excel in IT. He proposes to solve this organizationally with the help of thematic clubs and societies, where girls can communicate with their peers about career opportunities, as well as turn to senior IT colleagues for advice and support.

In fact, Sergey Tokarev gravitates towards this idea, because he has a successful example of its implementation. The public institution STEM is FEM created on its initiative, it solves this problem. By giving girls the opportunity to get to know different professions and women who have been successful in these professions, she overcomes all the obstacles that today’s female students have to overcome. For example, the project “Science is his” from STEM is FEM’s introduction of girls to the activities of 12 famous Ukrainian scientists. Among them are very motivating examples – women whose contribution to the development of Ukrainian IT was invaluable. This is Olga Perevozchikova, who coordinated the development of state programming standards, and Ekaterina Yushchenko, the author of one of the world’s first programming languages.

Now, to encourage young Ukrainian women aged 12 to 16 to enter the profession, STEM is FEM has created free online IT courses for them. The partners of the initiative are Swiss education organization Empowerment Lab and IT giant Oracle. The course covers Data-driven web application, Application prototyping and Machine Learning. The course is taught by women – clear examples of successful careers in IT.

This is not the only educational venture of Sergey Tokarev. Founded with his participation, SET University organized a cybersecurity course for young people this summer. 30% of course participants were angry. In the future, the university will develop the possibility of a scholarship program to encourage girls’ motivation to participate in IT.

Ukraine’s AI and ML community also creates AI HOUSE, another Tokarev and Roosh initiative that organizes trainings, courses and conferences. Women make up a quarter of the community’s participants, and the organizers believe their wealth will soon grow at a high rate.

Corporate culture in a company is something different. The issue of “decree” should remain on the threshold of those who respect themselves and their employees.

According to Sergey Tokarev, educational and training initiatives for girls from a young age, together with a neutral attitude at work, will increase the percentage of women in IT and give a new impetus to the development of technological business in Ukraine.