Russia marked a milestone Wednesday with its first large-scale event for women in technology, aimed at supporting female professionals working in spheres where they are distinctly outnumbered by men, such as IT.
Tatyana Arkharova (right), head of the Women and Tech project, shares a joke with other participants of the forum on Wednesday. Photo: Women and Tech.
Women and Tech, held at the Technopolis Moscow congress centre in partnership with the Skolkovo Foundation, follows in the footsteps of similar events held around the world to form networks of women working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and inspire younger generations to go into these professions, but was a first for Russia.
The event was the brainchild of Tatyana Arkharova, an entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in IT. She believes that technology is one of the forces removing previous gender-related restrictions, and wanted to demonstrate that there is no such thing as a “male profession.”
“Today, the 15 percent of companies that support the gender balance earned 15 percent more profits,” Arkharova told the audience of mostly – but not exclusively – women on Wednesday.
“It’s an indisputable fact. And not because they create any special conditions, but because the products those companies make are much better,” she said.
With main stage presentations and masterclasses devoted to formulas for success and entrepreneurship in fintech, biomed and education, as well as how to enter the Russian and foreign markets with a hi-tech company, the Women and Tech forum covered all the topics you would expect to see at any tech and innovations event around the world. The only difference was that 90 percent of the speakers – and at least the same proportion of the audience – were women.
Olga Strelova, head of cloud technologies at the Skolkovo Foundation. Flowers were a dominant decorative theme at the forum. Photo: Sk.ru.
Entrepreneurs attending the event were positive about the impact of tech forums focusing on women.
“It’s a kind of community, whose main purpose is to create areas of strength,” Yevgenia Lyubko, managing partner of Pryaniki, a Skolkovo resident startup that uses gamification to create internal corporate sites designed to motivate employees, told Sk.ru.
“When a lot of girls get together, they create their own areas of strength, which from a business point of view don’t differ from those from a mixed or male community. After all, as entrepreneurs, we’re defined by our competencies, not our gender,” she said.
“But when we get together, we have a lot of overlapping interests: many of us are mothers, so we know things a man can never know,” she said, laughing.
“Primarily, it’s not about obtaining new knowledge, it’s about the opportunity to communicate with like-minded people, get charged up with new energy, and get some answers to some questions that we have as women,” said Lyubko, who took part in a roundtable on innovations in education at the forum.
Natalya Glazkova, an entrepreneur and PhD student at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), agreed that one of the incentives of a women-focused event was networking.
“You get to socialise with people, you can see who is here,” she told Sk.ru.
“People who are interested in startups and technology are like any community, I wouldn’t divide it into male or female, but as a new movement [women-focused events] it’s interesting, because in other countries it’s been around for a long time, but here you don’t encounter it so often,” she said.
Glazkova, who recently set up her own biomed startup which she was due to present later in the day at the Eurasia Mobile Challenge, also said Women and Tech was a potential hunting ground for investors.
“There are lots of advantages to it. I’m really glad that events like this are now being held here – it’s great,” she said.
Pavel Novikov, head of Fintech at Skolkovo's IT cluster, pictured with Arkharova at the forum, where he moderated a roundtable. Photo: Women and Tech.
There are no readily available statistics for the number of women working in tech industries in Russia. In the U.K., the average proportion of women in tech teams is 14 percent, according to the Women in Technology 2015 report compiled by Mortimer Spinks technology recruitment consultants together with ComputerWeekly.com. But while the U.K., U.S. and other Western countries have large-scale mentoring programmes backed by major tech companies, in Russia, initiatives aimed at encouraging girls and women to pursue a STEM career are not yet well established.
There is, however, no shortage of success stories in Russia, and some of Skolkovo’s fastest-growing startups have female CEOs. In addition to Pryaniki, the Skolkovo companies represented at Women and Tech included ExoAtlet, Astro Digital, Cardberry, BrainySoft, Neurotrend and Netologia Group, and the forum’s first event was a presentation of the Skolkovo Foundation for those interested in becoming resident startups of the innovations centre.
“Self-realisation for women is a guarantee of a rich and interesting life, and self-realisation in the world of IT is doubly rewarding, since this area develops at a breakneck speed, which motivates you to improve yourself constantly,” said Olga Strelova, head of cloud technologies within the Skolkovo Foundation’s IT cluster.
In December last year, the UN General Assembly established an annual International Day of Women and Girls in Science – February 11 – to support and recognise women in science in the hope that others will follow their example.
With the first Women and Tech forum, Russia has made its own move toward that end – and for its founder Arkharova, that is just the beginning. She plans to set up a permanent support network, wmeste.fm, to encourage women to support each other and help create a society in which gender doesn’t matter.