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Welcome to our International Women’s Day celebration at 3 Sided Cube!
As your friendly neighbourhood software agency, we’re not just about building innovative solutions; we’re about sparking positive change millions of lives for the better. Our work across sectors like Environmental, Humanitarian, and AI showcases our commitment to tech for good, powered by our ridiculously talented team of Cubies. Among our ranks are 30 trailblazing women in tech, making up 42% of our dynamic Cubes.
In a world where PwC highlights a startling reality—78% of students drawing a blank when asked to name a female tech leader—it’s clear the road to equality is long. The Women Tech Network warns it might take over a century to bridge the economic pay gap, while Ipsos reveals a divided Britain on the progress of women’s equality.
The time to change that is NOW.
This International Women’s Day, we’re not just celebrating achievements; we’re igniting a global conversation on gender equality and the hurdles women continue to face. Progress is chugging along, but the journey to parity is far from over. At 3 Sided Cube, we stand proud above the industry norm, but true change requires a collective effort. It’s time for businesses everywhere to step up and elevate the standard together.
So, join us in this empowering conversation as we lift each other up, and honor International Women’s Day 2024.
International Women's Day
Each year, we globally celebrate International Women’s Day, an occasion dedicated to advocating for gender equality and the well-being of women everywhere. This year the theme is a powerful call to action: Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress!
This year, as highlighted by the United Nations, we’re urged to concentrate our efforts on five crucial areas:
Investing in women, recognising it as a fundamental human rights issue
Eradicating poverty
Adopting gender-responsive financing
Transitioning towards a green economy and a caring society
Empowering feminist change-makers
In celebration of unity and empowerment, this week we’ve launched IWD special episodes of Igniting Change, featuring extraordinary women making waves across various sectors. From exploring diversity in tech and its impact on social initiatives to discussing inclusivity, sexual health, and the essence of the modern feminist movement, these International Women’s Day conversations are not to be missed!
Meet our guests...
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Brittany Dernberger
As the Senior Care Manager at CARE joined the podcast to discuss challenging the status quo and advocating for gender equality through the power of data and storytelling.
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Nicole Levitz
Senior Director of Digital Health Interventions and Insights at Planned Parenthood, discusses on the transformative power of women in the technology sector.
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Amina Hersi
Amina Hersi, Head of Gender Rights and Justice at Oxfam International, explores the intricate landscape of the feminist movement in digital spaces and how the erosion of traditional champions of civic rights is reshaping the battle for human rights.
Why do you think it's important for more women to join the tech industry and how do you see them shaping the future?
Brittany: I think when we think about STEM fields, technology, another scientific field, it can’t just be a certain group of people, whether that’s gender or race or other identity categories. We benefit so much from having women and people of color, people from low-income backgrounds, in all industries, but I think, especially industries like technology that are so prolific, right, we all use technology in different ways in our daily lives and if those are only being built and designed by a certain group of people that just limits their utility for others.
Nicole: It’s absolutely important for women, for people of color, for trans folks, non-binary folks, to be encouraged to engage in tech. It has been a patriarchal industry for a long time and has been underrepresented consistently. What we’ve seen in having folks in leadership roles and guiding the stories of our products, we have greater diversity and better products that are serving users in the way that they need to be served. So ultimately, anyone who is impacted by the tech industry and emerging technology, which is everybody, should be represented in technology and among those who are doing the research, who are looking at the data, who are making and shaping products and implementing these technologies.
What kind of solutions are there in terms of creating the positive spaces?
Amina: I think civic space and restrictions and patriarchy go hand in hand, and I think we are seeing it disproportionately affecting women, especially from historically oppressed backgrounds in the global south, and we can counter this by creating safe, diverse, active like civic space. We want a space where feminist movements can thrive, that allows for equal, safe, and meaningful participation at all levels, whether it’s in the home, in the streets, or in decision-making spaces, like, having the meaningful participation, I think, this is the most important thing.
Amina then breaks it down into these four main areas:
One, governments and major funders need to make a political choice and they have to have the political will to fund and support gender justice. We always put our money where we think is most important, and so far we have seen that gender justice is not a priority because of how little funded it is.
The second is around really supporting and going beyond the individual empowerment of women and, for more NGO establishments. T__hose who are directly affected are the first to try and change the reality, and most of the time they do it without any kind of support or any kind of backing. So it’s about recognising their leadership. It’s about giving them the tools, the resources to drive policy change, to engage in meaningfully creating solutions for their realities and experiences, and capturing that information in a very systematic and sometimes also really important, gender-disaggregated data so that we can analyse, we can be informed when we are putting, whether it’s money or resources allocation, to evidence-based information.
Really trying to hold on and safeguard and protect the laws that are already progressive, and gender progressive in particular, and trying to eliminate all laws that restrict or criminalise the work that human rights defenders or feminist and queer movements do.
Ensuring there is a secure and enabling environment. So, coming back to my first point, and making sure that women human rights defenders are protected, they’re supported and their legitimacy is recognised.
We have the cornerstones of freedom of expression and association and assembly, but even that civil liberties in law are being eroded. So how to go beyond the theory of it and try and create laws that protect the people who defend these cornerstones of our freedoms is really important Amina Hersi, Head of the Gender Rights and Justice Team, Oxfam International
What advice do you have for young women aspiring to pursue a career in technology?
Brittany: There are two things I would say … One is to get experience and that could be through things like internships and entry-level jobs, but also things like a class project or a volunteer opportunity.
And then the second I would say is to just be curious and follow your curiosities. I think some of the best jobs I’ve had in my career are jobs that if you had asked me, like two years prior, I didn’t even know existed.
Nicole: There are two skills that I would bring to this space. One is curiosity, be interested in the world and stay curious. The other piece is resilience, which we see in the world that I live in a lot, serving not only the technology side but the work and making a change in the world, because when you’re building products, as you know, failure and iteration become essential to making good work, right, and feeling good about trying something, it not working, and trying again, and having the skill in your own self to think about the world like that.
How does funding and financing play a role in creating a positive space?
Amina: When we advocate for funding, we’re not asking just for mere cash, we’re asking for resources that enable us to break the chains of our current financial systems.
It’s not charity, it’s not, like, give us grants to do some activities, that’s not what we’re asking for. You know, money, the money accumulated by governments, by corporations, by billionaires has been taken from the backs of women, girls, and gender diverse and non-binary people And it is exploiting their labour and product productivity to keep them in low-paid and precarious jobs, with no access to resources and whether it’s, public services or social protection, or, shouldering the, the responsibilities of unpaid care work, struggling to make, you know, make ends meet. We are talking about making positive policy choices around resources and financing, rather than prioritising, for example, military budgets.
In what ways do you see technology being used to address societal challenges? And how can women in tech contribute to positive social impact through their work?
Brittany: There are just so many massive social problems that, as a global community, need to be addressed. We need women, we need people, who’ve been historically excluded from these conversations to be part of those design processes.
Brittany also talks about CARE Nepal’s app Go Nisha Go, which is a digital role-playing game for teenagers that deals with contraception, becoming sexually active, and other ‘taboo topics’ to help safely educate and encourage young people to think about the outcomes of different choices.
Nicole: Well, this one’s hard for me because this is my bread and butter. This is what Planned Parenthood’s tech teams do and have the great luck of being on an incredible team for our digital products folks and working with incredible people across the national office. I’m so grateful for the diversity there and their passion curiosity and resilience and tackling great societal change and challenges, and I have a few examples of products that I think I want to lift today.
Nicole continues to delve into more detail on innovations that have helped to empower PPFA’s patients and users with the information and healthcare expertise they need. These examples were:
What can be done to kind of achieve that meaningful representation and achieve the gender justice that we want so badly?
Amina: I’ll give one of my favorite quotes by June Jordan, which I think rings true today as it did when she wrote it. She says…
I've always had to invent the power my freedom requires June Jordan, American poet, essayist, and activist
And I think that quote is such a powerful representation of grassroots and local feminist, queer organisations. Some of the biggest and systemic changes we’ve achieved have been through grassroots movements, and gender justice is no exception.
In terms of guaranteeing meaningful representation, I think it takes all of us to play that role. They’re doing their part. So we need to step up and we need governments to step up and policy makers to step up. We need the individual level to the community level to the decision-making levels, you know all spaces to step up and enable A) for the recognition of the leadership and B) for meaningful engagement and representation, because otherwise, we are either talking to ourselves or we are creating policies that are so ill-informed and have no impact or actually could be counterproductive.
It’s really about also checking our egos, checking our power and privileges, and creating that space and really just, I think if you’re self-aware as well and want positive change and long-lasting, sustainable change. I think that’s the problem, we need more people who want that.
It’s good to remember that, despite some backsliding, we have made progress. But now is the time for governments and other organisations to show their efforts towards this change. As Amina says “Put your money where your mouth is”. We all have a part to play in this, how will you start yours?
Tune in to the full episodes with Brittany, Nicole, and Amina today, and be inspired by the incredible work Women are doing right now 💚
Published on 8 March 2024, last updated on 8 March 2024