For Globant, promoting inclusive and diverse organizations is not only a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activity, but also a strategic asset. Companies, services and products designed to help the world can achieve their goals if they have a diverse and connected workforce, according to Patricia Pomies, Chief Operating Officer, who details these observations in an interview.
1. What are the obstacles that a woman faces in the world of work?
The gender gap is the main obstacle that women face today in the world of work, and that transcends countries and industries. Although it is seen at all levels, where inequality is most evident is in leadership roles. According to the latest gender gap report published by the World Economic Forum, women occupy only 24% of leadership positions.
The challenge is to change the conception that certain careers and professions are exclusively for men. To achieve this, it is necessary to make a solid change in the way in which training paths are developed and in giving visibility to professional women in careers that were considered masculine.
Today, it is important for companies to understand that we have a leading role in reducing the gap and promoting the growth of women. Few joint programs can be observed between the private sector, the public sector, academia and civil society organizations promoting talent and generating the tools and opportunities for inclusion necessary to ensure the employability of more women.
At Globant we seek to inspire, make visible and attract talent with diverse profiles, ages and characteristics as a method to reverse this problem. For us, there is no innovation without diversity, and there is no diversity without inclusion.
2. Delving into the STEM industry What are the new challenges you face and the opportunities that have arisen?
In recent years, the industry has focused on the gender gap and the generation of opportunities to include more women. One of the factors of what is called the Leaky Pipeline of women who are already in jobs related to technology is the lack of confidence, opportunities, incentives and the inability in many cases to accompany them in the different stages of their growth. professional.
In order to learn how the pandemic has impacted women, men and other genders working in STEM, the new challenges they face and the opportunities that have arisen, Globant launched a unique global survey in the industry.
A differentiating finding is that 41% of women in technology said they had received an increase in their salary and only 19%, a decrease in their income. This number reveals the opportunities that women are finding in the technology industry, however the salary gap continues to exist, since 47% of men stated that their salary had increased.
This data is also essential because it shows that there has been a unique shift in the perception of the IT ecosystem. Contrary to what has happened in other sectors, STEM careers now represent a space where women can successfully develop their professional path. The numbers also reveal that there has been an improvement in the actions and policies that companies have put in place to retain female talent during the pandemic. For this reason, it is crucial that we continue to put our efforts into working for the inclusion and permanence of women in the technology industry.
In turn, it was shown that both men and women identified growth in learning opportunities, but it was to a lesser extent for those who have sons and daughters: 60% of this group recognized that their opportunities increased; while in people without children, this number was 67%. This highlights the impact of different actions in the industry that seek to generate more diverse spaces.
With these collected data, we can affirm that there is still a long way to go to boost the technology industry, but without a doubt, technological solutions generate exponential results. Therefore, it is essential that women and minorities participate in the design of the new technological paradigm, contributing their perspectives on the needs and potential challenges.
3. What are companies doing to bridge the gap?
Today companies seem to have understood that we have a leading role in reducing the gap and accompanying the growth of people within a company. That is why, increasingly, joint initiatives can be observed between the private sector, the public sector, academia and civil society organizations, promoting talent and generating the necessary inclusion tools to ensure the employability of more women in the world. of technology.
At Globant, through our Women that Build initiative, we design a route to accompany women and non-binary people throughout the different stages of their lives, from when they are in school until they start their first job, to continue their personal and professional development. At each stage (Inspire, Train, Hire, Mentor and Lead) we have implemented a variety of training programs and initiatives to break down barriers and accompany you in your progress towards leadership.
In this context, we committed that by 2025, 50% of our leadership positions are filled by women and non-binary people, in addition to awarding more than 15,000 scholarships.
Some of these initiatives are:
or Certified Tech Developer . This training program that we launched together with Mercado Libre, has already awarded more than 2,500 scholarships (50% to women), and aims to achieve rapid job placement for more than 10,000 young people from Latin America in the technology industry.
This initiative joins the Code Your Future Scholarships that seek to encourage the entry of young people into the technology industry through training in digital tools, while mitigating the gender gap in the IT industry. This program is developed in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Uruguay. About 3,500 scholarships have been awarded, of which 1,500 were awarded to women. Of the total scholarships, half of the graduates have already found work (50% in Globant and 50% in other companies in the sector).
or She Leads . Through this initiative, we detect talented women in middle management and promote their professional development through a mentoring program to help them discover their potential and design their careers from new perspectives.
or BIG (Back in the Game). It is a program launched as a pilot in India, which is implemented in various Latin American countries and seeks to reinsert women into the labor market who have interrupted their careers for some reason and today wish to return to professional activity.
o Work with communities . With various organizations, it seeks to inspire and train girls and women in technology. Our goal is to reduce the gender gap with programs such as Chicas Programadoras, Empower Her, and initiatives in partnership with Laboratoria.
o Diversity & Inclusion Learning Path . Through our Globant University platform, a specific learning instance on diversity and inclusion is available for more than 12,000 Globers around the world.
4. How do proposals such as the Women that Build Award promote the participation of women?
These types of proposals seek to stop imagining a diverse world and start building it. From the business world, it is necessary to implement strategic actions to create diverse and inclusive work environments that help reduce the gap and catalyze cultural change.
The are an instance of visibility and awards —which is in its third edition— that aims to recognize and make visible every woman and person who is perceived as a woman, who has worked in technology and has stood out in her work within the industry. STEM. This initiative was born with the aim of supporting the development of talented women leaders in technology, as well as generating a community that grows with each edition and forging solid relationships to support and inspire more women in technology.
The awards aim to recognize women from around the world in 5 categories: Board Executive, Digital Leader, Tech Entrepreneur, Techfluencer and Rising Star . In this edition, the winners will obtain scholarships for a leadership program at a world-class university, visibility in the NYSE Times Square Billboard, an international workshop in Spanish/English with the winners and finalists of the three editions, in addition to their attendance at the the overall award.
In its first two editions, throughout more than 25 countries, more than 4,000 candidates and 80,000 votes were gathered, with the support of more than 30 renowned organizations and reaching an impact of 16.9 million people with the diffusion in the media. .
5. Why is it important to make the role of women and diversity visible in the industry?
Unfortunately the role of women is still underrepresented in the software engineering industry. In the region, only three out of 10 workers in the field of mathematics and computer science are women. That is why it is extremely important to achieve substantial changes, both in organizations and in society in general.
Imagine a world where innovation depends exclusively on a group of equal people, who think and work in a similar way, who see things from the same point of view and make similar decisions. It is clear that without diversity there is no room for creativity, to find new ideas and different solutions, it would be a world without innovation.
Let us also imagine a world where women, without cultural stereotypes that have conditioned their vocation as girls, choose to train and develop in the technology sector, who can access, lead technology teams and projects and who are recognized for their potential and career. The gender gap in the sector shows that we are far from this reality.
Currently, these two problems coexist, affecting in the first place the personal and professional development of women and negatively impacting the capacity for innovation and growth of the sector, and ultimately, of society.
We at are determined to change this by inspiring and empowering women and non-binary people to enter tech-related careers, thereby creating a more diverse and inclusive industry.
