Celebrating Intl. Women's day at AIUB

On 20th March, 2016 - I gave a speech at American International University-Bangladesh, in an event to celebrate International Women’s Day and to encourage women in technical fields. This event was organized by IEEE AIUB Student Branch and Google Women TechMakers Bangladesh group.

I talked about the past, and the present, and shared my own experience in software industry, so that together, men and women can create a better future.

You can view the slides here, but it is not supposed to be completely understandable without my speech. But oh well!

References

I studied many articles before preparing this Presentation. However, the most notable ones are:

  1. The Forgotten Female Programmers Who Created Modern Tech
  2. When Women Stopped Coding
  3. Grace Hopper - The Queen of Software

Notes I made when I was preparing for it

I started preparing for it about a month ago, and wrote notes. I use MarkDown syntax for creating notes and planning, by the way. You should get an idea about what I wrote and what I talked about from here:

# Presentation on Motivating Women in STEM

## Key factors
- Motivate
- Do not discourage

## Points to Note
- Women in earlier computer science and coding
    -   Figures / Idols
- Women in present STEM
    - Lack of women compared to earlier periods
    - Statistics (1/4 in STEM)
    - Less Paid
    - Still Idols

## Reasons

- Stereotypical idea about women:
    - Loves to gossip
    - Are not analytical
    - Weak

## Problems Why Companies Do Not Want to take women
- Does not want to stay after work hours
- Will take maternity leave for weeks (22 in Bangladesh)!
- Won't be able to give support from home in case of emergency
- has to take care of husband when HUSBAND is sick!!

## Facts
- No conclusive study about lack of analytical ability in women
- In fact, no stereotypical comments are valid!
- Can work just as hard as men
- Women good structured programmer example

## What to do

- Start from home. Teach children that women and men are different, but not superior or inferior in any way
- Allow your children to break toys!
- Don't be afraid to speak up about your needs in job. Chances are, men have no idea that you need those, even though they are willing to cooperate
- The women who are leading, took a bold step, against the normal norms of society. We need to make that a habit.

# Tips for Preparing Slides
- Abnormality
- Don't use templates
- Flat Colors #5FA6A9 Green, #C84D64 RED, #EAAE54 Paste , #2B2937 black , #4968AB yellow
- Use good fonts (Helvetica? )
- Use Images
- BIG is beautiful
- Info-graphics
Written on March 20, 2016