International Women’s Day
International Women’s Day emerged from labor movements in North America and Europe at the turn of the 20th century. The day was first celebrated by the United Nations (UN) in the year 1975. Since then, countries worldwide have been celebrating the occasion on 8 March.
Today, the social, political, economic, and cultural achievements of women are celebrated globally, focusing on what more can be done to achieve gender parity in all spheres of life.
This year, the campaign theme for International Women’s Day 2022 is #BreakTheBias. Whether deliberate or unconscious, multiple biases make it difficult for women to move ahead. Knowing that bias exists isn’t enough. Action is needed to level the playing field. That is why we asked the women in our team Florencia Gomez, Wine Brand Ambassador, and Lamis Ezziddine, Senior Software Engineer, about biases in their areas of expertise and how they have moved away from this.
Florencia is Wiv’s Brand Ambassador. She is an Argentinian wine professional with over 12 years of experience in Argentina, the US, the UK, France, and Croatia. She has worked all along the wine supply chain, from winemaking to exports and marketing, and she is currently a stage 2 Master of Wine candidate. She is passionate about modern wine brands with a shared love for innovation, sustainability, technology, and consumers trends.
What are the main work biases in the wine industry?
“It is crazy to think that still in 2021, plenty of people would still agree that females are a perfect fit for laboratory or administrative tasks. I clearly remember 20 years old-me already struggling to accept that bias. Not only did I meet plenty of qualified men thrilling in the lab arena, but I also had a lot of fierce female winemaker friends dreaming of so many different things. Nowadays, I am very happy to see many of those women making the best out of their professional careers: not only analyzing wine but also buying, selling, making, and communicating wine all over the world. Similarly, in the sales world, women often fall into the stereotype of being more skilled for marketing and brand ambassador positions and struggle to get into leadership positions. Not for being short on qualifications or skills (believe me), but for lack of opportunities. There is so much to be done to break the famous glass ceiling. Lastly, I think that there is still a misconception about gender pay not being a thing. Although there is plenty of evidence worldwide to say gap ranged between men and women sits from 3% to 51% , that is a bias that needs to be broken.”
Lamis is a senior software engineer with over 8 years of experience. She is currently a senior software engineer based at Wiv. She has a joyful and rich experience working with international teams and projects, such as the USA, New Zealand, Germany, and UAE.
She believes in the great power of technology and what can bring unlimited improvements and creativity to the world. Also, she firmly believes that software development is a collaborative process and that great success stories and achievements belong to the whole team.
What are the main work biases in the tech industry?
“Some would think that women and technology don’t match that well and that it would be more difficult for women to fully grasp the concepts of technology and coding in particular.
I had those opinions translated in many ways from some teammates or managers. Still, my passion and pride never were less for being a software engineer, writing awesome code, and getting my hands dirty in new technologies. It was the opposite.
Every time I had that gender discrimination, I got more stubborn and insisted on doing more and more in my career. For me and with time and experience, I did understand well that culture and gender discrimination could be found and expressed in many ways, and it’s really “NOT PERSONAL”,
It’s just a mindset for some people, whatever their career or education level is, and that it doesn’t deserve to be given priority to effect my career target and growth and my self-esteem, actually with what I could do and learn.
I could sometimes break that mindset to some people and make them understand that no career is just given to a specific gender, and that’s it just pure effort, achievements, and improvement a human commits to and achieves. I could wish that all the discriminations, whatever they are, to just vanish and equality will happen in everything and every little detail we live in, but unfortunately, it’s not that easy; all we can do is keep our faith, strength, and determination and to really focus on our own path and to keep progressing in that path and never look or give importance to any negative and toxic mindset whatever it is.”
The United Nations has stated that it would mark the day with the theme “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.” Let’s keep celebrating the fabulous women on our team!
