Giving remote working options is a way to attract more women to the tech industry, said an all-woman panel at Huddle Kerala 2019

Girls should be encouraged to embrace and pursue tech from a very young age to bring them into the industry, said an all-woman panel at ‘Huddle Kerala 2019 in Thiruvananthapuram.

They were participating in a panel session, titled ‘She is the Boss, She loves Tech’, on the second day of the startup event organised by Kerala Startup Mission.

The five panellists unanimously agreed that to attract more women to the tech industry, they should be given remote working options.

“Women’s representation in tech in India and worldwide is minuscule,” said Kiran Bhat, Founder and MD of Xebec Communications. “To address this gender gap, women should be encouraged to pursue tech from a very young age. This should start at the school and grassroots level.”

Also Read: “We need to break gender imbalance in the internet space,” says Facebook India MD Ajit Mohan

According to Pooja Ravishankar, Head, Category Marketing at BigBasket.com, daughters should be encouraged to do jobs that are traditionally perceived to be men’s.

“We should let daughters get their hands dirty at a very young age. They should get mentoring sessions at three or four years. Girl should also be allowed to fix a flat tyre or fix a plumbing problem at home. We should not limit their world to doing just household chores,” Ravishankar added.

Sruthi Kannan, Head- Launchpad Startup Accelerator at CISCO, said even though there is a limited number of women in the industry, their quality is remarkable.

“Everyone should be able to unlock his/her true potential. It is our responsibility to take our fellow women along in this journey,” said Anuja Chaudhary, Director ( Enterprise and Alliances) at Builder.AI.

Ravishankar believes that giving remote working options is a way to attract women to the tech industry. More girls should go out and become technocrats in future.

Bhat says that things have changed and become easy for women to take up entrepreneurship. “When I started years ago, things were difficult for women, but things have now become a little easy and organised. Funding is no longer difficult. That’s the best thing that happened.

Secondly, earlier women didn’t do anything with their degree or take up jobs. That is also changing. Now there is a lot of MNCs and tech firms, which allows women to work from home. What we need is to learn how to get along with people and how to work as a team. Working from home and learning skillsets is easy today,” added Bhat.

When you start a business, there is no difference between women and men, and there is no bias. They all need products, clients, finance, operations skills to manage the business. Women have to play to their strength. Neither funding nor tech is prohibited for women, feels Bhat.

The post ‘Girls should be encouraged to pursue tech at a very young age’ appeared first on e27.