The ‘Young Women Leading Tech & Innovation’ was a youth roundtable hosted by the Generation Equality Action Leaders Digital Grassroots on 27th January 2021. The 90-minute session was attended by over 190 participants from at least 30 countries from across the globe. It featured four keynote speakers who brought their perspectives to four key priority areas of the Action Coalition for Technology and Innovation:
- Valentina Muñoz Rabanal (Chile) is the Programmer and president of AMUJI and talked about the development of gender-transformative tech solutions.
- Somaya Faruqi (Afghanistan) is the Leader of the Afghan Girls Robotic Team and talked about bridging the gender gap in digital access and literacy.
- Jianne Soriano (Hong Kong) is an Advocate for Women and Ethnic Minorities and Youth4IG Outreach Lead and talked about building safe digital spaces for women, free from abuse.
- Charlette N’Guessan (Ivory Coast) is the CEO of BACE Group and talked about building inclusive innovation ecosystems.
The youth roundtable opened with Audrey Fontaine, a member of the Generation Equality Taskforce and representatives from Digital Grassroots, Uffa Modey and Esther Mwema, gave opening and closing remarks.
The roundtable was built as an interactive dialogue which provided participants with the opportunity to share their views and react to the speakers’ inspiring statements.
Prior to the roundtable, we asked the community of young people to take part in the ‘Innovate 2021’ artwork. The art contributions were presented in the introduction, as seen on the cover of this report. They touched on themes about the planet and our vision of our environment, online education especially in the context of COVID-19, STEM, justice and discrimination, and young people’s collective vision of our near future. We received 37 contributions from at least 25 countries.
This report aims to summarize the key outcomes of the youth roundtable by spotlighting the demands of young women in technology and innovation. Session participants highlighted their core priorities for each proposed action through live polling. It is our hope that this report inspires collective action for gender equality across the Generation Equality Action Coalitions platforms to involve young people in the drafting and implementation of the final blueprint.