North America | United States | Adventure

The women of NASA are looking to the lunar horizon

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Growing up, Holly Ridings, Anne McClain and Nujoud Merancy dreamed of space. But they didn't let those dreams rest to become flights of childhood fancy. Now, all three women work at NASA. McClain is an astronaut who just returned from a six-month stint on the International Space Station. Merancy is the Exploration Mission Planning and Analysis lead for the Orion spacecraft that will be part of the Artemis mission in 2024. And Ridings is the first female chief flight director. And they're all working toward the goal of landing the first woman on the moon by 2024.
Asia | Kyrgyzstan | Career

Kyrgyzstan’s space women blast off from male dominance

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Having grown up in one of the poorest and most conservative regions in Kyrgyzstan, 17-year-old Begaiym Isaakova never imagined she would work in tech, let alone be part of a team of young women building the country's first spacecraft. By age 15, Isaakova was shocked to see her peers in Jalal-Abad being married off, but not too surprised. The message that girls should prioritise knowing how to serve men started early and was everywhere, including in schools and homes. Instead of being sent down the aisle in a country where early and forced marriage - including by bride kidnap - is common
Africa | Ethiopia | Technology

Change attitudes for future generations of women in tech, UN urges

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Celebrated every year on the fourth Thursday of April, the Day is an initiative of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and aims to encourage and empower girls and young women to consider entering the growing field of ICT,​ enabling both girls and technology companies to reap the benefits of greater female participation in the sector. This year, falling on 25 April, and with main celebrations happening in the Ethiopian capital, the day was marked across the world. The UN telecomms agency estimates that within the next 10 years, there could be as many as two mi
South Asia | Afghanistan | Science

Finally, visas in hand, Afghan girls depart for the U.S. and a global robotics competition

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When Afghan 10th-grader Fatemeh Qaderian learned that her girls’ robotics team had been denied visas to attend an international competition in Washington — despite applying twice — the 14-year-old said she “lost hope.” “We worked hard and spent a lot of time,” said Qaderian, who flew back and forth with her teammates from their hometown in western Afghanistan to apply at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. “I called my parents and told them what happened, and they were upset, too.” Those emotions morphed into elation as Qaderian and her teammates boarded a plane at Kabul Interna
North America | United States | Technology

Women in tech winner at Mac

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A McMaster engineering student has won an important award from the Anita Borg Institute, a women-in-tech organization in the United States. "I was in tears when I found out that I won the award," said Alyssia Jovellanos, who is in her second year in the engineering department's computer science program. Jovellanos is the first female president of McMaster's Computer Science Society and spends her summers and spare time teaching code to hundreds of grade school kids through a Comp Science outreach program.
South Asia | Australia | Science

Female students dominate Australia’s largest STEM event

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Female high school students took centre stage at the largest STEM event ever held in Australia: the combined National Finals of the F1inSchools Technology Challenge, Subs in Schools Technology Challenge and Land Rover 4X4 in Schools Technology Challenge. The inaugural Subs in Schools competition was won by an all-girl team 'Athena' from St. Peters Girls School in Adelaide. The second and third placed teams in the 'rookie' (Development) class of the F1 competition were all-girls. When the three top teams stood on the podium to receive their trophies there were nine girl students and four male
International | Technology

How one woman’s app is changing politics in the digital age

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For a woman whose day-to-day work revolves around reimagining democracy for the digital era, Pia Mancini is pretty relaxed. On a windy day in San Francisco, where the Argentine political scientist is based, she Skypes me between meetings, her hair whipping across her face in the breeze. The 33-year-old has worked for thinktanks, in public policy and on a range of political campaigns. But in recent years she has devoted her time to launching non-profit organisations and venture-backed collaborative projects that could change the way citizens engage with politics all over the world. “The
North America | United States | Entrepreneurship

Black Female Engineer Creates Job Matching App Designed To Remove Bias From Tech Hiring

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At the young age of 13, Stephanie Lampkin learned to code. By the time she was 15, she was fluent in computer programming. Graduating from Stanford University with an engineering degree and from MIT with an MBA, she remembers still being told her background wasn’t “technical enough” when applying for a position at a well-known tech firm in Silicon Valley. “The recruiter told me a sales or marketing job might open up,” she said. Luckily for Stephanie, she ended up landing a position at Microsoft, where she would spend five years working in a technical position. But Stephanie con
North America | United States | Technology

Female coders are rated more highly than men—except when people know they’re women

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A group of computer scientists, when studying the acceptance of contributions on the software repository GitHub, found open source code written by women is actually more often approved than code written by men. The catch—there’s always a catch—is that this only happens when the woman’s gender is hidden. GitHub, which is used by more than 12 million people, allows developers to write code for the projects of other software developers, who then choose whether to approve the submissions. Among the three million submissions (or “pull requests”) the researchers examined, female-written
Asia | China | Technology

She’s Connected: China’s Female Internet Users Top 300 Mil

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The number of Chinese female Internet users has exceeded 300 million for the first time, according to a report released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) on January 22. By December 2015, China had 688 million people using the Internet, representing around half of the country's population, the report said. Some 90 percent of them surf the net through mobile phones. Female Internet users accounted for some 46 percent of the total, compared with the ratio of nearly 44 percent in 2014. The online population is seeing huge rises in growth overall. In December 2015, Ch
Latin America | Brazil | Economy

Brazil slashes red tape to expedite scientific research

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Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff signed into law on Monday a measure eliminating bureaucratic obstacles to scientific research and aiming to promote innovation and production of technology in South America's largest economy. The new legislation "will have extraordinary impact on competitiveness and productivity," she said during the signing ceremony in the presidential palace. The National Code of Science, Technology and Innovation was passed by Congress last month.
South Asia | Afghanistan | Technology

How Afghan women are making unprecedented strides in the technology sector, despite challenges

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Earlier this month, on December 17, a vibrant group of young women, with the help of Twitter, congregated in Bengaluru to discuss new trends and potential of women influence in technology. A lot has been written on that, the participants of which are rightfully seen as influencers of women empowerment in the region. However, about 2,500 kilometres away, a much smaller gathering of female technology professionals came together to share their insights with young talented women, in a less likely setting—in the war-torn city of Kabul - for the TechWomen Summit. Young Afghan women, who were al
International | Entrepreneurship

Bridgit takes top prize at Google for Entrepreneurs’ inaugural women’s demo day

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Lauren Lake and Mallorie Brodie, co-founders of Waterloo Region’s Bridgit, took top prize at Google for Entrepreneur’s inaugural Demo Day: Women’s Edition. The event was spurred by the fact that female founders get just 3-4 percent of the venture captial pie, despite the amazing companies they’re building globally. To be eligible to compete, the startups needed at least one female founder and to be actively raising a Series A round between $1,000,000 and $5,000,000. Google for Entrepreneurs received 450 applications from over 40 countries, and Bridgit was among the 11 female-led
Middle East | Lebanon | Technology

Women in Lebanon show computer coding is not just for the boys

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On 21 November, in Bliss Hall at the American University of Beirut (AUB), a group of nearly 50 young computer programmers gathered at 8am for a hackathon. After coffee and a quick croissant, they were divided into 10 teams, and spent the next 10 hours developing Android apps to solve a social problem of their choice, in line with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. While 20 years ago, the term "hacking" might have connoted images of sinister dweebs clad in black, committing cyber crimes in a grimy basement, today "hack" has been incorporated into polite society; to hack something s