Sergey Tokarev: How can we get more Women Working in Ukrainian IT?

Currently, women make up about 25% of all IT professionals in Ukraine. Women make up around a third of the senior positions in IT organizations. But this is insufficient. The proportion of women working in Ukrainian IT must rise. This can be accomplished by creating educational programs, as IT entrepreneur, Founder Partner Roosh, Reface investor Sergey Tokarev writes in his blog.

Tokarev asserts that many women are reluctant to enter the information technology (IT) sector because of persistent misconceptions that it is primarily a “male” field. Women frequently hear, for instance, that they choose IT just to meet their husbands there or that they may only work as HR or QA testers.

This scares away a lot of girls. As a result, the industry loses potentially valuable future employees. In addition, there is a present lack of experts in data science, AI, machine learning, and cybersecurity in the IT industry.

According to Sergey Tokarev, “The creation of thematic clubs and communities is important to tackle this problem.” This way, every girl interested in IT can find a female role model in the field and can seek out others who share their interests for guidance or assistance.

Hence, for instance, the project STEM is FEM started the initiative SHE is SCIENCE to encourage girls to pursue careers in STEM. The project allowed the participants to learn about the professional backgrounds of 12 Ukrainian scientists. The project’s faces included, among others, two female IT professionals: Kateryna Yushchenko, a programmer who developed a formal language for addressable computer programming, and Olga Perevozchikova, a scientist who took part in developing state programming standards in Ukraine.

Moreover, STEM is FEM enables girls to practice IT. This year, the program introduced free IT classes for girls between the ages of 12 and 16 in collaboration with the Swiss group Empowerment Lab and with the help of Oracle. Classes in machine learning, app prototyping, and data-driven web apps are available to participants. The teachers are female IT professionals.

Sergey Tokarev thinks that once a schoolgirl decides which sector of information technology she is most interested in, high education should play a role.

SET University, which only focuses on technology, held a cybersecurity course for teenagers this summer. Even though both boys and girls could enroll in the classes, 30% of students were female. The need for IT among girls is real. They require encouragement and inspiration. The university, therefore, intends to launch scholarship programs for girls later.

To help girls develop their careers, support is also important. Creating professional networks like AI HOUSE is one of the tools. This effort brings together and arranges training for AI and ML experts from Ukraine and beyond. Approximately 25% of the group is currently made up of women, but the organizers anticipate that more professionals will soon join them.

Girls’ and women’s participation in the sector can therefore be considerably increased by creating educational possibilities for them. Sergey Tokarev summarizes, “After all, every schoolgirl who is interested in programming but does not receive any help contributes to gender inequity, a shortage of skilled staff, and a loss of earnings for your company and the country’s economy in the future.”