Here’s to Strong Women — Juntos na TI </>

“Here’s to strong women, may we be them…May we raise them.” Unknown author

Recently the discussion among gender equality has been trending. From Hollywood with the #MeToo movement to our daily basis struggle the society has been reflexive on its many BIAS. Although the principal topic of this discussion is “how to be a strong women” it seems that the connections get lost in individuality. Far from myself to say this is not an important issue — to be confident about yourself, your career and everything else — but I wonder how can we create a culture of strong women? How can we build a world where women can be already raised strong?

I’m not joking when I say that what we do on Diversity & Inclusion is a self-destructive work. We work on Diversity & Inclusion to assure this won’t be a topic in the future. And not because we don’t want equality, that’s not it at all. The goal is to not have to talk more about it because the equality will be already instated. This is a goal that can only be achieved through culture development.

More than being strong women we should start to raise them. When we think of raising someone the first thing that comes to mind is as in a maternity process. Yes, as mothers as well but not just that. We can raise strong women as their colleagues, family, daughters, leaders, mentors, teachers and sponsors. Our local iWin committee has consistently been sponsoring local and global events on Women in STEM fields, such as Django Girls, Rails Girls and even our own program in partnership with Jr Achievement and CSR, Girl For IT.

On the last month, more precisely April 14th, we sponsored a new event for us: Juntos na TI </> (Together in IT in Portuguese). It was a very fulfilling experience to see the collaborative atmosphere between women of all ages. Our colleague Camila was part both of the round-table and the HTML & CSS workshop (which she nailed it in both situations). We also had the amazing participation of Taiane that participated on a talk for Afropython — an amazing collective that struggles for equality to People of Color in IT (and everywhere else). Both moments were very touching and certainly made some eyes teary.

“It was a Saturday morning. I had to wake up very early and for my surprise when I arrived there, there were a lot of women from all ages very excited to learn.” said Camila. “Me and another three volunteers talked about challenges and opportunities to Women on IT.”

The event also had the outstanding presence of Michelle, a trans activist and DBA at DELL Inc. She spoke on the round-table about the difficulties she had to handle when she was transitioning and how her professional life made a difference on her life in that though time. It incremented the discussion and proved that we have to work on connections to support all necessities in order to permit everyone to achieve their goals and have a happy life (which everyone should have the right to).

“We had an inspiring conversation, shared a lot of experiences and points of view. The presence of a transgender woman was very important because she could share with us how society used to treat her before her transition. She made it very clear that women and men have different treatments of their coworkers when they show their opinion.” Camila completed.

This first moment of the event had a great impact on the crowd that had nothing of passiveness, they participated from the beginning to the end, always sharing their fears and thoughts. After a short break to lunch, we headed to the workshop room where Camila would teach the girls about HTML and CSS.

“The feedback I received from the participants made me sure we did a great job! This kind of project is very important to improve diversity in a such homogeneous area as information technology. I’m very happy to have made part of this amazing initiative. And ADP supporting this event with a partnership with other companies makes me proud. We can make the difference!” Camila said.

Empowering our coworkers to raise empowered people. That is the culture ADP has been building locally step-by-step, being humble, listening, learning and teaching to reach a positive impact globally. And we are proud to be part of this.