100 000 Polish Girls go STEM!

Thank you for your support and encouragement for young women to seize career options in Poland.

The second part of the year we have spend on prepearing the next edition on our action for Gilrs - in 2012.

Meanwhile we were active on the field of the know-how transfer.

On 17-18th September 2011 we took part in the 3rd Congress of Women which was held in Warsaw, Poland as an event of the Polish Presidency in the European Union.

The Congress of Women is both Poland’s largest non-political civic movement and an annual summit aiming at gender equality in private and public spheres. We had an opportunity to present our goals and discuss our challenges with great deal of active women who are politicians, entrepreneurs, scientists, civil and culture activists. The leading topic of this year’s Congress was the situation in the post-crisis world and the diagnosis for the future.
Inequalities between women and men in technology, science, R&D and innovations impose a heavy toll on the economy and human capital. We recommend the change of young people’s way of thinking that can increase the number of women at technology and engineering study and improve gender balance in the fields of research and industry.

The Council of the Congress stated: “We are interested in the female point of view, the way women perceive the world, but also the challenges that women face. Women’s participation in the shaping of the world is something that is not only growing but also desired”.

The next Special Day at Technical Universities - For Girls Only is coming soon. See you there. :)

Links:

• our web site
• our fb profile

Thank you for supporting young women's career choices in Poland.

The annual Day At Technical Universities: For Girls Only! sponsored by Symantec was celebrated on April 14^th, 2011. 5,000 young women visited technical universities. Over 2 million televiewers learned about our project and increasing lack of qualified staff in the technical field in the news on national television.

Girls As Engineers campaign with Day At Technical Universities: For Girls Only! have been launched to change young women’s behaviour patterns and expand their spectrum of career options. The number of girls choosing “female” careers or subjects of study is very high in Poland. In doing so they do not fully exhaust their career opportunities. This event is a chance for girls to learn about the world of work, the challenges engineers face, and also how the schoolwork they do today could help them in their future. 

On the 14th of April 2011 technical universities with all departments, facilities and research centres organised an open day for girls and opened their laboratories and workshops to give concrete examples that show girls how interesting this kind of study and work can be. Through a great variety of events young women gain an insight into life of student of technical sciences, research worker and academic. Wide range of activities were presented to girls aged 15-19.

At the 20 technical universities and faculties of physics, mathematics and informatics the number of all participants went beyond 5000. With a great interest of the media girls are supported by all instances playing an important role in their career choices i.e. families, schools, teachers and employers.

Our campaign since 2008 has been engaging media in a debate on how scientific and technological progress is to meet the needs of Europe’s citizens and industry. One of most important issues is increasing the number of women in the fields of study and work that are traditionally male areas and solving problem of under-representation of women in certain scientific fields. Technical universities are reporting about an increasing number of young women in technical departments. We all will benefit gender equality.

Links:

• offical website
• facebook - 2400 fans

• Our publication on Girls in Engineering (PDF)