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
South Asia | India | Technology

Meet the women entrepreneurs who are tapping AI to revolutionise fashion ecommerce

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If data is the new oil, artificial intelligence is the new electricity. AI is helping e-sellers add a personal touch to the shopping experience for buyers. India’s ecommerce market is estimated to be worth $84 billion by 2021 (as per the latest RAI report), which means more offline merchants are coming online. And one of the sectors seeing a revolution, courtesy AI, is fashion retail. Fashion retailers, even those from small towns, are embracing technology, to be seen at par with or as more progressive than their counterparts in metro cities. And a few women-led startups are guiding th
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
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
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
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
North America | United States | Technology

A 97-year-old tech fan gets her wish to visit Google

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At 97, most of us would probably want to sit back and reflect on the past. But Olive Horrell only wants to look toward the future. The great grandmother grew up without electricity or radio, when the regular mode of transportation was a horse and buggy. From a young age, Horrell wanted to be an engineer but was discouraged by her father. Despite this, she has maintained a healthy sense of curiosity and regularly uses her laptop to email loved ones. She even once called tech support so she could fix the computer herself. Horrell wanted to visit Google to find out how all this technolog
North America | United States | Science

Her Code Got Humans on the Moon—And Invented Software Itself

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Margaret Hamilton wasn’t supposed to invent the modern concept of software and land men on the moon. It was 1960, not a time when women were encouraged to seek out high-powered technical work. Hamilton, a 24-year-old with an undergrad degree in mathematics, had gotten a job as a programmer at MIT, and the plan was for her to support her husband through his three-year stint at Harvard Law. After that, it would be her turn—she wanted a graduate degree in math. But the Apollo space program came along. And Hamilton stayed in the lab to lead an epic feat of engineering that would help change
Latin America | Chile | Activism

Native Women Bring Solar Energy to Chile’s Atacama Desert

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Three indigenous communities from the Chilean highlands have just received solar panels, which will be set up and maintained by unlikely solar engineers: five native women who travelled halfway around the world to India and overcame language and other barriers to bring photovoltaic energy to their villages. Luisa and Liliana Terán are cousins from Caspana, an Atacameña indigenous community; Elena Achú and Elvira Urrelo are from the Quechua village of Ollagüe; and Nicolasa Yufla is an Aymara Indian from Toconce. The three villages, with a combined population of 1,000, are in the Atacama
North America | United States | Activism

Meet the 15-Year-Old Tech Whiz Whose Software Is Turning the Tide Against Internet Hate

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Most people in most situations could probably benefit from one tiny prompt: “Are you sure you want to do that?” Fifteen-year-old techie Trisha Prabhu says that question could be the difference between life and death. Prabhu is the inventor of ReThink, a software program that recognizes when users enter phrases often used to cyberbully into a computer—and displays a pop-up window asking the writer to reconsider. The Chicago high school student’s own studies find that a simple prompt (“Are you sure you want to send that message?”) is enough to discourage its teen users from
Asia | Vietnam | Activism

Vietnamese youth use social media to advocate for ending violence against women and girls

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Thirty-five youth leaders and activists from Northern to Southern regions of Viet Nam came together to participate in a three-day training organized by UN Women and the Viet Nam Volunteer Center, Youth Union (VVC). The training aimed to deepen knowledge and understanding of the youth leaders and activists on gender equality and violence against women and girls (VAWG), using social media as a tool to advocate and engage other youth in ending VAWG. In Viet Nam, a remarkable 95 per cent of young people between the age of 15 and 24 have access to the internet. Due to a growing demand and po