Engineer Leonardo Loureiro, President of Cuti and representatives of the Board of Directors, were received by the Vice President of the Republic, Beatriz Argimón, on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 23rd. The importance of bringing more women to the sector was the focus of the meeting.
From Cuti it is understood that, to add more women to the industry, it is essential to bring them closer to information technologies and encourage them to study careers related to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - STEM for its acronym in English. According to the 2019 ICT Academic Training report, in 2018 only 23.8% of entrants to IT careers were women, compared to 76.2% of men.
This situation was presented to Vice-President Beatriz Argimón and in a joint dialogue the possible causes of this situation were analyzed, concluding that it is a multi-causal situation and that it is essential to work to reverse this reality. In this regard, information was provided on the work carried out by the Inter-institutional Roundtable of Women in Science, Innovation and Technology, within the framework of which numerous public policy proposals were developed to promote and encourage women's involvement in science and technology. The Vice-Presidency expressed its interest in promoting this initiative from the Parliament together with representatives of all parties, in order to reactivate and promote this inter-institutional activity.
At the same time, they participated in the awareness-raising work being done from Cuti aimed at connecting more young people with technology. The Gender Equality Table that works in the Chamber, "Techy for the Day" an activity in the framework of the international celebration of Girls in Tech in April each year and the Mujeres IT community were some of the initiatives presented and the importance of enhancing the message of these was highlighted, as well as generating more concrete actions to reach more young people, parents, educators, vocational counselors and society in general.
Regarding the initiatives presented, Vice-President Beatriz Argimón proposed to work on ideas that involve the Legislative Palace and thus the Parliament, where the whole society is represented, and thus act as a sounding board for the message so that it can reach more people in all corners of the country. Based on this approach, it was agreed to work together on concrete actions to bring technology closer to more girls and young people, a topic of great interest to both parties.
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