Where is the Next Gen of Women in Tech?

The drive from the city of Kolkata, India to the Metiabruz neighborhood on its outskirts should be quick. Instead, traffic clogs the busy roads leading through docks along the Hoogly River. Trucks hauling shipping containers jam the roads, with men pulling overloaded carts jostling for space in a mismatched battle for right of way. The constant movement kicks up cough-inducing amounts of dust, and coats everything along the roads with a thin brown layer.

Once you make it into Metiabruz, the commotion changes but doesn’t become less intense. Roadways are packed with shops selling everything imaginable, and an eye-catchingly high number of brightly colored kite shops line the streets. The neighborhood is a maze of narrow ways lined with concrete buildings and informal homes next to which open drains and piles of garbage betray the lack of government services.

It is a poorly served neighborhood of Kolkata, with many residents living in informal housing, finding it hard to access steady work, relying instead on daily wage labor. The majority of the area is Muslim, a community that has been systematically and historically marginalized in India.

Traditional beliefs in this neighborhood often dictate that women’s roles are that of homemaker and caretaker. Education access is low generally, and lower still for girls.

You would never think that there are hundreds of women working in tech in this neighborhood.

In 2012, together with a coalition of individuals from the community, iMerit established a tech employment and training center in Metiabruz. Today, the center employs over 200 young women from the neighborhood, providing them stable and empowering careers in a sector that seems out of place in this busy neighborhood. The center itself is staffed by over 90% women. It is the only provider of IT jobs in the area, and the fact that it is targeted at upskilling and employing women in particular makes even more unusual.

Over the years, we have seen immense growth among our young women, and change throughout the community. Our employees tell stories of once-skeptical families fully embracing their decision to pursue education and encouraging their other daughters to follow the same path.

Hundreds of families have a secure source of income that far outstrips the earlier potential for daily earnings in the area. Respect for women as wage-earners, as students, as critical parts of the technology future, as dreamers, has grown.

One-by-one these young women are building not just their own futures, but that of the tech scene in India.

There is still a great deal of work to be done to fully include women in formal education and employment systems in Metiabruz, in India, and in tech companies all over the globe. But we are at a point where we have a say in where the future’s women tech leaders come from. It’s high time that we raise our voices and ensure that the future of tech employment is evenly spread, vibrant, and benefits us all.