08 March 2022 marks International Women’s Day, a day of global celebration for the advancements we are collectively making in achieving gender diversity, equity and inclusion. The global theme #BreakTheBias is about showing your commitment to calling out bias, smashing stereotypes, breaking inequality, and rejecting discrimination. As part of this celebration, we are launching our year-long WomHub campaign, “Igniting the Ecosystem” that talks to the important work that is being and still needs to be done to create diversity and inclusion for women from participation through to ownership and funding within Science, Technology, Engineering and Manufacturing (STEM).
At WomHub, we always believe that an ecosystem wide approach is required to fix the challenges around diversity, equity and inclusion within the STEM industry. It’s not enough just to support girls in getting excited about engineering careers and getting into STEM careers. It’s not enough to support students getting into the engineering industry at a graduate level. It’s not enough to get women in engineering to stay within engineering and retain them within the engineering sector. It’s not enough to just support female entrepreneurs from venture building, incubation, acceleration and investment.
While each one of these components are important on their own, collectively they are required to support the industry.
At WomHub, we always believe that an ecosystem wide approach is required to fix the challenges around diversity, equity and inclusion within the STEM industry. It’s not enough just to support girls in getting excited about engineering careers and getting into STEM careers. It’s not enough to support students getting into the engineering industry at a graduate level. It’s not enough to get women in engineering to stay within engineering and retain them within the engineering sector. It’s not enough to just support female entrepreneurs from venture building, incubation, acceleration and investment.
While each one of these components are important on their own, collectively they are required to support the industry.
We are working from attraction, (how do we get girls excited about engineering careers?) to ownership and investment (how do we support entrepreneurs in the ecosystem and ensure that they have the funding and support required to grow businesses?) because while it’s important as a bottom-up approach, there’s also the top-down piece that becomes really critical for longevity. If we have more woman-founded businesses within the engineering and tech industries that are equally funded and are able to grow, they’re able to hire more women and more women engineers. They are also able to be role-models for women in the broader STEM industry. It also means that young girls will look up to them and will want to gravitate to the industry. While we’re fuelling the system from a bottom-up approach, we’re ensuring that top-down, we create these long lasting, sustainable wins that ensure we have an ecosystem that is diverse, equitable and inclusive for women so that everybody will thrive.
At WomHub we are igniting the ecosystem by ensuring that we break the bias at every inflection point within the broader STEM ecosystem:
We believe it is important for us to ignite this entire ecosystem because of the intrinsic biases all along the STEM value chain. It is our job to be able to create an ecosystem that allows women to thrive without the biases that hold them back and hold us as a society back. When we say “we’re igniting the ecosystem to break the bias” it means that we are working on systemic changes to make sure that we create an equitable future for all.
- At points where girls get excited about engineering careers and get into the engineering and technology industry;
- At points where they are at university and entering the workplace;
- At points where they are in industry;
- At points where they are entrepreneurs; and
- Everything in-between.
We believe it is important for us to ignite this entire ecosystem because of the intrinsic biases all along the STEM value chain. It is our job to be able to create an ecosystem that allows women to thrive without the biases that hold them back and hold us as a society back. When we say “we’re igniting the ecosystem to break the bias” it means that we are working on systemic changes to make sure that we create an equitable future for all.
Take Action Now
Would you like to be part of WomHub's ecosystem as a partner to help girls and women lead at the highest levels? Or as a participant on our incubator and accelerator programmes? Maybe a #1MillionGirlsinSTEM Ambassador, creating awareness about opportunities in STEM? Or rather join our WomHub team that makes this possible? Let us know how you are interested and we will get back to you.