STEM UP
Issue Addressed:
In Argentina, women face greater barriers than their male counterparts when seeking to enter the job market, access quality employment, and hold decision-making positions. This phenomenon is further accentuated in STEM careers (CIPPEC, 2020). Only 17% of people working in technology in Argentina are women, and only 8% of people in technical roles are women (Chicas en Tecnología, 2021). Similarly, women face barriers to advancement in their scientific careers (CIPPEC, 2021).
This inequality is compounded by the vulnerable socio-economic context of our main target audience. Our target populations are the residents of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, commonly known as the "Conurbano," (particularly municipalities belonging to the Western Zone), and residents of underserved neighborhoods from the Capital City. In La Matanza, which is the largest district in Western Conurbano, there are 122 vulnerable neighborhoods where more than 53,000 families live, making it the district with the most informal settlements in the entire Province (El 1 Digital, 2020). Living in these contexts exposes women to various challenges, including social mandates of domestic and caregiving responsibilities, gender-based violence, higher rates of teenage pregnancies, and difficulty in finding time to study. From profiling our beneficiaries, we have discovered that most of them are first-generation university students in their families, who had to face many challenges and fight stigma to study for a degree, and who did not have much contact with the professional world before.
Thus, our target audience is affected by the intersectionality of vulnerabilities: women who face barriers to attaining leadership positions in the STEM industry, as well as women living in marginalized localities, embedded in unfavorable socio-economic conditions, with a high burden of caregiving tasks, cultural barriers, and stereotypes associated with STEM careers, seeking to advance in their professional careers.
Solution Proposed:
The project addresses these issues by providing free-of-charge learning experiences and professional opportunities to these women so that they can have a fair chance of advancing to leadership positions in the STEM industries.
The project consists of a 4 months long training program. In the first month, 4 practical workshops addressing key leadership skills are offered: Effective Communication, Team Management, Personal Brand - Networking, and Career Planning. For the next 3 months, participants are connected with mentors and job shadowing experiences so that they can better plan their professional goals, receive expert advice on how to advance them, and create connections with the industries they want to engage with. All of these activities are complemented by an ever-expanding online community, for accessing continuous training and opportunities, as well as providing support and networking.
2023 - 2025 Impact Metrics:
- Number of women trained (+210)
- Positive change in the perception of the leadership skills of partipants (average of +30% leadership skills reported through pre and post surveys)
- Number of mentorship relationships created (+90)
- 1 networking event hosted
- 1 factory visit executed
- Community building (+500 members of the LinkedIn group)
- Skills addressed in the workshops: Assertive Communication, Team Management, Conflict Resolution, Personal Branding, Co-Creation of Impact Projects and Career Planning).
- Partnership creation. Donors: The Melton Foundation and INVAP. In-Kind donors: Huawei, Tenaris, ALBOR, Quilmes and McDonald's. Corporate volunteering: Red Hat. Promotion partners: Vital Voices, Girl in Tech, among other NGOs. Universities where the program was hosted: National University of la Matanza (UNLaM), Universidad Abierta Interamericana, University of Buenos Aires
- Press exposure: participation in a national TV show on C5N channel, participation in the national radio program "Desde las Aulas" ("From the Classrooms")
For more information visit our website http://globalshapersba.org