A Tech Boost for Inclusion

First off, we need to look at education and the changes that need to be made to make social inclusion a reality. Ive listened to both complaints in the industry and complaints in schools regarding the education system. While industry believes that schools and colleges should approach them for collaboration to improve education system as well as make it more interesting, their general complaint is education is still too theoretical and they should focus on making it more practical which is where we come in. Educational institutions believe it should be the other way aroundif industry want students who are skilled to do their jobs, they should contact and collaborate with us as they are talking about their future employees.

At School Level

With the world becoming increasingly electronic, students have better access to visualizing the concepts they learn in school though the school system still remains a boring one of mugging or studying and writing exams on which they are graded. The exams are less about understanding and more about memorizingthe industry does have a point here. But, if they are not going to collaborate with the educational institutions, this is only going to continue and not inculcate the skillset in their future employees as the educational institutions claim. Secondly, both need to acknowledge that the access is still lacking in the rural India which they have to address by conducting workshops and donating computers to schools in these areas. Furthermore, the school syllabus should be more gender sensitiveespecially books and their illustrations. This might change the next generations thinking and increase their acceptance that women are fit to be leaders, co-workers, scientists, and company bosses.

At College Level

The syllabus in college is technically outdated from current industry standards. Summer workshops in small towns and villages could be conducted to help create awareness among women and girls/boys. Secondly, industry should allow internships for school/college students instead of just visits and projects. This should be across the board and in all regions. In both urban and rural areas, there should be contests at school and college levels where the student with the best science project which could usually be a technical innovation (by the way, that is how the vegetable skin peeler came into being) or a new software. The prize could be the industry bearing the cost of the students education for the rest of her/his school term or college term or maybe paying up the education loan of the student or producing the product and marketing it?

But this is just the start. Education alone doesnt guarantee a more inclusive society. As long as men dont share 50% of the home work or the workplace, it will not be so.

At the Workplace

It is important to address gender imbalance in workplaces for two reasonswhen education has become 50:50 at the school level and is heading towards the same at the college level except for Mechanical Engineering and Production Engineering, the workplace is completely off balance, which doesnt make sense!

Industry needs to realize that having a 50:50 gender balance is actually an advantage at both the board level and workplace. After all, dont you want to succeed by outdoing your competitor? Then get the
balance right. Consider the following points.

• Female partners or female co-founders or female board members are a competitive advantage as you can make the most of the various schemes and concessions for women given by the government.
• Having more women employees or partners makes your company more visible as it is different.
• Women control home spending and are the major consumers. By having more female employees and more board members thus more women who are aware of your projects and products and more women if you are women friendly.
• Take the success of Net-a-Porteran online company that sold handbags. Tech is not always about gadgets but also about innovation. Mostly, there is the entrepreneur who is the ideas person and the marketer who spreads the ideas. A successful entrepreneur-marketer team is the one which ends up with a successful business. If one of them is a woman, then you are able to reach more prospective consumers as women talk which is free advertisement and marketing for your company.
• If you have learnt anything from the leakage of the Radia tapes, women employees are loyal, adept at networking and hardworking to promote the interests of their employers even if that turns them into workaholics! They also faithfully follow orders and dont cheat their employers even if they can.

Other Initiatives

Apart from all the above steps or changes we need to make in education and workplace, we need to do more like the following:

• Annual summer or winter retreats for women in technology are necessary as this would lead to both networking and brainstorming.
• To bridge the ruralurban divide, we need to start more interactions by conducting contests or workshops right from the school level, so there is more interaction and information exchange.
• We need more college level initiatives where a team of professors visit rural areas to spread awareness about available courses in their town or city. Financial institutions need to visit schools as hospitals do for blood camps or eye camps and inform the people in rural areas about education loans apart from their crop insurance schemes.
• We also need industrial trips between various states to overcome cultural divides and traditional notions about technology and perceptions about it being only for elite usage.
• We should conduct more weekend workshops or exhibitions of technology which are monthly in your local communitytown or city that is more along the lines of craft or clothes exhibition. There were consumers who arent necessarily tech savvy can learn for themselves about new gadgets and new software and buy it too.
• Nowadays, industry relies on huge expos, software conferences or something similar to Comdex in the US to spread the word about latest products. Instead, we should attempt to reach the end user like the industry used to in the early 90s when computers were still a novelty and inkjet printers were still in vogue! Also, using magazines meant for IT and IteS is another option.

If we do all of the above then technology will truly bring about change and will create a more inclusive society by bridging the gaps instead of widening them in the ruralurban divide.

Deepa Kandaswamy
The author is the founder-moderator of the IndianWISE e-group
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in