The Executive Yuan’s Department of Gender Equality will be sponsoring a celebration to mark Girls in ICT Day, a global initiative of the U.N. International Telecommunication Union, on Thursday afternoon at National Taipei University of Technology’s (NTUT) iFoundry base.

Organized by the Foundation for Women’s Rights Promotion and Development, the event will include guests from the American Institute in Taiwan, NTUT, the National Taiwan Science Education Center, Microsoft Taiwan and the feminist website Womany. Female scientists and engineers across different generations will also share and talk about their personal journeys from education to the workplace. A “3-D printing pen” session will be arranged for participants to experience that technology’s innovative applications for the real world.

The Department of Gender Equality said that the government has been actively encouraging young women to get involved in science and technology to correct the longstanding gender imbalance in these fields. Aside from celebrating Girls in ICT Day, the department has planned a Gendered Innovation for Science and Technology promotional series for 2017 to address various issues surrounding women and technology discussed at recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings. This series will include a “women power laboratory” seminar in July, a workshop in September on women using new technology for creativity, and a training course in October on young women in technology. These events will combine gender issues in science and technology across the public and private sectors and present them to young people in a lively fashion, encouraging Taiwanese girls and young women to study and make their careers in science and technology.

Girls in ICT Day, launched by the U.N. in 2011, is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of April each year. To date, over 240,000 girls and young women have taken part in more than 7,200 celebrations for this event in 160 countries worldwide.

Date: 2017-04-26
Source: Department of Information Services, Executive Yuan