More than 800 female software engineers from around Pakistan participated in Google’s Women Techmakers program this year, which offered them the opportunity to undergo training. The activities were hosted as a part of the celebrations for International Women’s Day (IWD), and they included critical issues like coding and presenting skills, in addition to internet safety.
This year, the International Women’s Day (IWD) theme is #ProgressNotPerfection, which aims to celebrate the progression of women in all of their incarnations rather than clinging to preconceived conceptions of what constitutes perfection and what constitutes failure. The Women Techmaker sessions hosted by Google featured motivational women speakers who told stories about how they overcame obstacles in their lives and careers. The sessions also included networking events, which allowed women participants to connect with more people in the industry and forge new opportunities. The sessions were organized around the theme of empowering women.
Google’s Regional Director for Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, Farhan S. Qureshi, made the following statement:
“At Google, we are making concerted efforts to highlight the accomplishments of women working in technology and encourage more women in Pakistan to pursue careers in this field. This year, the Women Techmakers ambassadors have done an incredible job of organizing activities that are relevant and beneficial for the community of women developers, and we are looking forward to seeing more women in technology step forward to become role models for other women in the industry.”
Hira Tariq, a WTM Ambassador in Karachi, said:
“According to the comments received, the Women Techmakers workshops offered a great deal of good energy to the communities of women and gave a great number of women the confidence to prevail over challenges encountered along their own paths. To promote the idea that it is normal for women to fail and that we should celebrate the incremental accomplishments we make for the women’s community, we have aligned ourselves with the subject of #ProgressNotPerfection. We hope that our efforts have helped disseminate this message.”
In celebration of International Women’s Day (IWD), Google has organized hundreds of events for women technologists in more than 75 countries since 2013. Our goal is to create a society in which all women have the opportunity to succeed in the field of technology, and one of the ways we plan to do this is by hosting events that will help women in the field gain exposure, a sense of community, and access to resources.
