We have just started a small project called FixIT digital that further develops our earlier action plan FixIT, in which we aimed to increase women’s participation in technology-related innovation. FixIT builds on the existing knowledge gathered and research conducted through Nordwit, particularly through interviewing women working across the ICT sector and employers in ICT organizations. In FixIT we developed a “package” of gender balance competence, introducing ten themes that would guide actors in the field of innovation to work for a better gender balance. FixIT digital aims to overcome some of the difficulties we faced in our action plan FixIT. It is important to highlight the difficulties we faced, since they tell us about gender equality issues in the field of technology-related innovation.
As I wrote in a previous blog post about challenges in doing action research in ICT work across sectors in rural Norway, we have found out that many companies are small and they do not allocate enough resources for promoting gender equality. Thus, our gender balance competence package was developed as an accessible tool for both individuals and companies with limited knowledge on gender and gender equality. In addition, we identified some concerns that gender equality work might be costly. Our package introduces a step-by-step application of gender equality principles that foregrounds the necessity of seeing and recognizing the imbalances that exist in the field.
Which brings us to FixIT digital. This new project engages with two key challenges that we faced in implementing FixIT: the difficulty of reaching out to the innovation actors that belong to a varied group 1) with different meeting points; 2) when gender equality is the theme of the discussion. In order to meet these challenges, FixIT digital aims to;
- convert the earlier gender balance competence ‘package’ into an online format which would be designed to be interactive – whether as a quiz or a discussion forum.
- Include a group of innovation actors from public and private sectors as well as civil society to act as reference groups that can provide feedback on the digital version of the package, but also be used as a channel to reach diverse innovation actors.
- mobilize innovation actors across sectors to attend a webinar where the online package will be introduced.
Gilda Seddighi
NORDWIT 