Against the digital gender gap, here is a training and job placement project involving
150 Italian and foreign women: let’s go over the details of Progetto ITac@, in this second part of our Informatici Senza Frontiere in-depth analysis, with Lorenza Pilloni, project manager of the initiative.
In Italy, women in prominent or leadership roles are still few, too few. The latest Women in Business of the Grant Thornton International Business Report says that, in 2022, they represent 30%, one percentage point more than in 2021 but at the bottom of the 30 world economies analysed. The situation worsens among foreign women: according to the Migration Observatory, in fact, even though women represent 65% and their level of education is on average higher than that of men, these people are often ghettoised into a few sectors, such as domestic and care services and office and shop cleaning.
Data are not everything, but they do help to quantify the negative situation of female employment in Italy, which does not only concern the world of technology. It is from closing the digital divide, however, that the turnaround can begin. They are convinced of this within the association Informatici Senza Frontiere (ISF), a reality that we presented in the previous issue of the column and leader of Progetto ITac@, realised within the framework of the ‘Futura’ call for proposals financed by the Digital Republic Fund, in collaboration with companies and other non-profit associations. “We wanted to put together all the opportunities that young women can use to ensure a career in the near future, with a special focus on migrants and second generations who, if trained and integrated, can make an important contribution to the country,” says Lorenza Pilloni, project manager of Informatici Senza Frontiere and project manager of Progetto ITac@.
Progetto ITac@: details and results
How does the initiative actually work? Thanks to the collaboration with the company Mygrants, which provided the portal of the same name, all the enrolled women took a skills assessment and were then included in the courses. ISF and its partners are training 150 women aged between 18 and 50, giving them basic and advanced digital skills, soft skills, and labour market training. At the end of the project, the participants will take a new assessment and will be able to get in touch with the many companies on the Pickme portal, while the organisations involved will facilitate the matching of job supply and demand.
“At the moment, more than half of the planned courses have already started,” adds Lorenza Pilloni. “From January, the third basic programming course will also start. During the training, support services such as coaching, ongoing tutoring, study/work reconciliation, baby parking and baby-sitting are also activated. The feedback is very positive: the teachers speak of enthusiastic and very motivated girls, determined to finish the courses.”
More initiatives against the digital divide
But ISF’s training and awareness-raising activities continue. In fact, the Modena Smart project of digital training and accompaniment to the active and autonomous search for work in this area is ending, while the Job Skills Recipes European project is in full swing, with ISF working alongside organisations in Greece and Latvia to promote the social inclusion of vulnerable groups. In addition, ‘A digital future for Kajiado Central, Kenya’ will soon be launched: a project financed by the Eight per Thousand of the Waldensian Church that will see ISF engaged alongside the Kenyan non-profit association Matrix Algebra CBO in the digital training of young mother girls, who will be able to start secretarial jobs in tourist facilities between Kenya and Tanzania.
“At the same time, ISF’s projects to support disabilities, the prevention of online hatred and cyberbullying, the training of teachers on programming with Scratch, and the release of the opensource software Open Hospital for the digital management of hospitals in emerging countries continue… In the meantime, we start thinking about the Informatici Senza Frontiere 2024 Festival!” concludes Lorenza Pilloni.
This article is part of the column produced in collaboration with the Italian Group of the AVIXA Women’s Council. One of the Council’s main objectives is to give visibility to professional women in the AV world in Italy and to activities dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion in the Italian STEM sector.
