Women Tech: Santa Catarina State Joins Route to Encourage Female Empowerment

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The presence of Brazilian women in the areas of computing is low and utterly unequal in relation to men. Only 20 percent of the professionals working in the areas of information technology are women.

The data are from the National Household Sample Survey of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The lack of qualifications is not the issue, but rather the inequality of salaries. According to the survey, women in the sector are paid 34 percent less than men.

“Women need to fill technology vacancies in companies,” says Nicolli dos Santos, a 19-year-old digital entrepreneur. The young woman lives in Florianópolis, a city “focused on innovation and technology,” she says excitedly.

In mid-November, more than a hundred women took part in the Startup Weekend, focused on the female public. Held in Florianópolis, the Brazilian edition was 54 hours of intense work. The world event is organized by Techstars and Google for Enterpreneurs, and its mission is “to teach and promote entrepreneurship in local communities”.

Software developer and IOT consultant, telecommunications engineer Letícia Coelho, says that at the event in Florianópolis women “created new products, with an impact on society. In addition to great experiences in new technologies designed to help people,” she says.

Nicolli dos Santos and Letícia Coelho were part of the Startup Weekend Women mentoring team. At the time participants were encouraged to brainstorm, validate it, and build a business model. They also developed prototypes and introduced a pitch to an assessment board. The mentors are considered a reference in their markets, with the purpose of “boosting so that the actions lead to real results”.

Nicolli and Letícia recorded the images of the following video, exclusively for The Rio Times. Check it out:

Focus on women

Startup Weekend Women is a special edition of the event focused on the inclusion and development of female leadership. In Florianópolis, 75 percent of participants, mentors, and organizers are women.

The entrant’s theme was freely chosen. The event was aimed at encouraging female entrepreneurship and the inclusion of more women in technology. “So that we may have more qualified people in our ecosystem, who can invest this knowledge to start their business, or in the positions they already hold within the companies they work for”, says Letícia Coelho.

“We had 14 teams in this edition that over the course of 54 hours were able to achieve these goals,” she says.

“Seventy-four percent of girls express interest in the field of science, technology, math, and engineering. But the fact is that only 30 percent of the world’s researchers are women,” said Adriana Carvalho, manager of the Principles of Economic Empowerment of UN Women Brazil, in a recent interview with Época magazine.

Startup Weekend is a global network of high-impact leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to “inspire, educate and empower individuals, teams, and communities”. More than 8,000 startups have been created at events held in nearly 100 countries. According to the organization, “Startup Weekend is an immersion event, a unique experience where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if their startup ideas are feasible.

Startup Weekend is present in 150 countries, having already taken place in over 4,000 events in more than 1,000 cities around the world. The community is estimated at more than 190,000 members.

“Around 12 percent of the initiatives continue, but that’s not the program’s goal. Unlike a Hackathon, where the goal is to have technological solutions at the end, the main goal of Startup Weekend is to train professionals who are able to detect problems, find solutions and turn them into opportunities,” explains Letícia Coelho.

The world event is organized by TechStars. In Santa Catarina, it is supported by SEBRAE through the StartupSC program.

For more information on team organizers and sponsors, click here.