Kia ora,
2024 is looking like the year of ground breaking participation from women. The Paris 2024 Olympic Games are being called the first “gender-equal Olympics” because it has achieved “full gender parity on the field of play”. To all of us watching from home, this means that the line up of athletes should be 50% women for the first time in history.
Here at TechWomen we are seeing a similar trend with record-breaking participation in two of our key programmes this year, Mentoring Circles and ShadowTech.
The TechWomen Mentoring Circles kicked off in June, and this year we received over 300 applications – more than double the number in 2023, resulting in 60 mentors and 171 mentees involved, 20 in-person circles and nine virtual circles hosted in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch, Queenstown, and online.
The circles have now met for two of their five sessions, and it’s been wonderful to see mentors and mentees sharing their experiences and learnings on LinkedIn. This initiative is completely volunteer-led, and Jemma Simmonds, with support from Tash Bettridge, Sharee Nielson, Amanda Veldman, Yvonne Daymond, Melanie Truscott, and Jenni Powell, have put in a huge effort to get our circles up and running smoothly across the whole country.
The next two weeks will also bring ShadowTech back into our schools, and once again we have seen unprecedented interest! In 2024 ShadowTech will introduce over 1000 high school girls, from 75 schools across eight locations to the amazing world of tech. ShadowTech is able to grow because of all our supporters including Deloitte, Westpac, TechStep, CyberCX, Verizon Connect, Tuatahi First Fibre, Ministry of Education and VISA, and with the willingness of local tech companies and our participating schools. We look forward to sharing the highlights of ShadowTech 2024 with you all in our next newsletter.
Whether it’s getting out on the sports field, grabbing a coffee with your mentor, or helping young women learn that tech is so much more than just coding, we encourage you to get out there and continue increasing the number of women shaping our world.
Ngā mihi
The TechWomen Team
Read the full news: Breaking records in Paris and Aotearoa | August Newsletter
