Let’s hack the gender gap all together!

08/03/2021

Today, on the occasion of International Womens’ Day we have a lot to celebrate! 

Every March 8th, Optiva celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political contributions and achievements of women. A collective day of global celebration and a call for gender equality,

We honour and take action to help create a gender-equal world and see its mission realised, keep on reading!

Many structural barriers to gender equality in research and innovation persist. With Horizon Europe, the European Commission is committed to promoting the Gender Equality Strategy for 2020-2025, which sets out a well-established regulatory framework on women visibility in the STEM sector. 

Specific funding will be dedicated to developing inclusive policies related to gender and intersectional research. During the session “Get ready: A new ERA for Equality is calling” of the European Research & Innovation Days, Jean-Eric Paquet, General Director of Research and Innovation of the European Commission, announced that every legal entity (public body, research centre or higher education institution) must have an equality plan in place to access funding from the next Framework Programme. The goal is to create a gender-equal working environment where all talents can thrive and better integrate the gender dimension in projects, technologies and innovations produced, improving the European research and innovation system.

 As a telecommunication company with extended expertise in the R&D and the audiovisual sector, Optiva Media will contribute with an action that overcomes the lack of visibility of women in the STEM industry. We understand the growing concern that content recommendation algorithms in the streaming media service are dismissing an important part of the existing cultural offer. These unfair and opaque recommendation technologies favour mainstream TV content that glorifies values such as sexism, violence, and perpetuates social discriminations, visualizing a labour market where women are still over-represented in lower-paid sectors and under-represented in decision-making positions. 

Content recommendation based on deep learning don’t orient end-users about the latent aspects guiding the recommendations they are provided with. Typically non-mainstream content could receive a greater deal of attention if the recommendation outputs are equipped with a societal score related to aspects such as race, gender, social/cultural inclusion, etc. 

Optiva Media resolves to develop a responsible TV automatic recommendation system that introduces societally relevant aspects related to gender, inclusiveness and cultural diversity to inspire young minds and encourage them in securing better education and training.

The responsible recommendation engine will have a double beneficial impact by letting users know about relevant aspects of the content they are offered and by unearthing potentially interesting content that might go otherwise unnoticed under the tyranny of current mainstream-oriented, content-blind technologies. Helping end-users to understand the feedback they are given and operators to tune the internal algorithms in their recommendation service.

´´Making a positive difference for women belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts. So make International Women’s Day your day and do what you can to truly make a positive difference for women. ”  — source

Don’t forget to celebrate some of the incredible work being done by associations to support women in tech. Which enables women to build a solid career in STEM, and benefits Optiva creating great professionals which enrich our company and work. 

1. Girls who code.  Girls Who Code was founded to close the gender gap in technology and is helping to build the next generation of female engineers. 
2. National center for women and information Technology. The NCWIT is a national non-profit that “convenes, equips, and unites” women of all ages to take action. 
3. Women in tech  is an international organization with a double mission: to close the gender gap and to help women embrace technology. 
4. CIMA : They promote an equal presence in the audiovisual sector, contributing to a balanced and realistic representation of women in media.