Women's rights

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  • Saka's Avatar
    Level 52
    It is a bit different from the topic of women in gaming, but still about women, so maybe it would be good to discuss about the situation of women. Since this is the Nordic community, it can be about the Nordics, but discussions about other places are welcome too.

    IWWOF - International Working Women of Finland is a non-profit organisation in Finland focusing on providing peer support and networking to women in Finland. Today they shared some stats about employment gaps in Finland, which is supposedly a progressive country.

    Only 54% of international women are employed in Finland against 70% of international men.

    14% of international women are unemployed, against 11% of international men.

    I'd like to discuss the reasons of the status quo and what can be done to improve the situation.

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    From my personal experience, women in scientific/technical professions tend to be seen as less competent than their male counterparts.
    Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
    *delete as appropriate
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  • DoctorEldritch's Avatar
    Community Manager
    @Saka there is a way to go, for sure, but the good news is that there are organizations like this that help to conquer this problem. And it is good that this issue can be approached on multiple levels: personal, governmental, corporate, and so forth.

    From Lenovo's side, there is some good news to share, and this comes from your comment about women in scientific/technical professions tending to be seen as less competent than their male counterparts. This was noticed as well, and there are ways to help, though not exclusively in Finland in this case, but there is a discussion on how to increase Gender Diversity across the Talent Pipeline in Technical professions.

    And there are even more personal stories of Lenovo professionals as we strive for equity. Cat Capon was an interesting read to me (Ecotourism, yey!), but you may find Joan Marie illuminating, she is a NASA engineer. Hard to get more tech than that!
  • Saka's Avatar
    Level 52
    @DoctorEldritch I love the "Girls Belong in Tech" tees. Can I have one too?! 😉

    Having a role model definitely helps, both people who are only about to choose their path and those who already are on it and struggle along. It's inspiring that with enough perseverance some of us can get very far. I really admire Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD. She's a woman, an immigrant - but yet she made it to the very top. Her knowledge in semiconductors is astounding.

    I agree that the early education and stereotypes are a problem. I was never encouraged to do engineering-related things as a kid, but I was stubborn enough to do some anyway. But even then, I barely knew anything about programming and didn't write any code of my own until I went to the university. Nowadays I see teens panicking that they can't study programming, because they haven't learned any of it. Well, it's not too late, but stereotypes make it sound so. It was certainly rough starting off when half of my class had done some basic programming their entire time in high school.

    The representation at the scientific classes can be problematic too. When I started my bachelor degree you could count the girls on your hands from circa 200 students. I must say, it is fortunately getting better, but the improvement is slow. I have a friend who dropped out because she couldn't deal with the male culture at her faculty, they had even fewer girls there. Unfortunately, misogyny is a problem at male dominated places. Even nowadays I often am subject to mansplaining, where the offender is relying on information from tabloid articles and trying to invalidate my years of experience in relevant field.
    Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
    *delete as appropriate
  • Saka's Avatar
    Level 52
    I found this nice video, regrettably it has no CC available, but Windows 11 Live Captions were spot on:

    Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
    *delete as appropriate
  • JetStream's Avatar
    Level 29
    I think this is not a great difference
    These numbers show that Finland women community is so competetive with men in most professions
    ".Let's Dance"
  • DoctorEldritch's Avatar
    Community Manager
    I think this is not a great difference
    These numbers show that Finland women community is so competetive with men in most professions

    What do you mean, is it good that they are competitive?
  • Saka's Avatar
    Level 52
    I missed the responses to the topic, but in my opinion there is a quite big difference between 54% and 70% when it is about a rather large group.
    Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
    *delete as appropriate