Hello World, Hello Women in Tech!
Our newest Label A Theme
Two years ago, on the 18th of July, I landed for the first time in The Netherlands.
I was feeling quite brave with the idea of coming to a new country to work in a job position that I never worked in a serious way before. Quite a challenge for me, a then 21 years old Spanish girl that was finishing her Fine Arts studies.
Hello Dutchies, Hello Bitterballen, Hello Tech World!
Two days after my arrival I was already starting my new job. Really exciting! (I must admit that a big part of me was REALLY scared). I got my new iMac, my new chair, my new stickers and I met my new colleagues.
I quickly developed a very good relationship with all my colleagues and I was really surprised when I noticed that everybody in the company did put so much effort in making me feel at home.
Logically, after some time the novelties were slowing down a bit, and I started paying attention to something that I actually didn’t noticed before with all the exciting things happening… Behind the early assumption that language was going to be a barrier at least during some time, another thing came up: Why am I surrounded by 27 males and ONLY 2 females? Is this proportion difference normal?
Could it be related with the isolation feeling that I was experiencing for some time — yet when all the guys were teaming up for jokes and other “social stuff”?
Since then I started reading and checking information about the condition of women in tech companies to compare my case to others. I was really amazed with the crazy amount of resources about it! I was also quite stunned when I saw the low average numbers of female employees in Tech companies in the Netherlands (11%) and even more shocked when I saw numbers of companies like Facebook, where the female percentage is incredibly low compared with the number of male employees. I definitely wanted to know more about all of this.
I wasn’t an early bird joining the discussion, but what I did knew is that in my workspace the topic was quite new. I talked to the managing partners of Label A, Bram and Oscar, about it and we all agreed on starting something to be part of the movement that brings more females into tech. That’s how the Label A Theme ‘Women in Tech’ was born!
We are now starting a two-month theme where the entire Label A team will be involved in defining strategies that will help Label A to collaborate in the broader discussion about Women in Tech.
About the Theme
Label A launched the theme to create awareness around public topics and to do something back for the community. We’re now a middle-sized company and we feel that we have to try to make a dent in the universe.
The theme Women in Tech will be split up in two main events: A first awareness presentation will help the team to understand why are we doing this and what kind of results we are expecting. The second event will be a Summer Camp where females of all ages will be invited to join our team and be involved in all the processes to create an online product: From business plans to concepting and development. (We will post more information about the Summer camp soon!)
What we expect
Of course, the effects that we expect to have are not only framed in the two months that we host the theme internally. We want to keep working on this topic from now on, and we are convinced that with every small step we will be able to make the difference in the future. We want Label A to be known as a women-friendly tech company in every possible way, in our own way. That includes things like improvements in job openings, sharing inspiration from important female personalities in tech on our Slack channels, and the use of codes of conducts in our internal events, among others.
