Social entrepreneurship has been under scrutiny for several years now. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, there is less of a gender gap in social entrepreneurship : “of the world’s social entrepreneurs, an estimated 55% are male and 45% are female – a gender gap that is less pronounced than in commercial entrepreneurship”.
Nevertheless, many reports have highlighted the need for a better integration of women and gender minorities in the social economy, especially as social entrepreneurs.
This initial study of the Coop4Equality project, co-developed by DLI, collected data about gender mainstreaming in the European social entrepreneurship ecosystem to better understand stakeholders’ practices regarding gender equality and inclusivity and aims to answer the following questions:
How do the social entrepreneurship ecosystems mainstream gender-lens?
Is the social entrepreneurship ecosystem adapted to women entrepreneurs?
Does it take their needs into account?
Is there a good understanding of gender equality within this ecosystem?
The Revitalizing STEM Education Program is part of a Series of STEM Education Actions led by UNESCO
The Revitalizing STEM program builds on groundbreaking work in this field led by UNESCO’s Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe, including support for a regional STEM Alliance, a diverse group of stakeholders in STEM and Education from across Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean. For the past three years, Cheryl Miller, DLI Director, has contributed to the STEM Alliance and authored a report for UNESCO on Digital and Gender Policies in Southeast Europe which also helped inform the present action (see YouTube video here).
Cheryl Miller, DLI Director, authored “Gender and Digital Policies” Report for the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe
The GenSTEMed project aims to increase knowledge of factors influencing the decisions girls and women make about STEM studies and careers, an area in which Romania enjoys global leadership. The project’s Research Activities begin with stakeholder surveys and interviews starting in September 2024, outcomes of which will be shared at a hybrid event in Bucharest in February 2025. The event will also host practitioner discussions, inspiring role model talks, and Educational Activities, latter including hands-on emerging technology workshops targeting students and practitioners and aiming to showcase practices that increase participation of girls and women in STEM.
STEM Alliance Conference, April 2023
To learn more about the Gender and STEM Education in Romania project, please follow the UNESCO program website or contact us here.
by Lucia Klestincova – Originally posted on LinkedIn
Patriarchy is a real thing. The more you have to give to society, the harder it is. How to lessen the suffering? Check out this unique conversation with a founder of the Digital Leadership Institute, mother of four, policy influencer with decades of experience from Brussels to Washington, and my inspiration – Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, MBA
📣 How to deal with the overwhelm of women empowerment not really advancing? 🔦 Why did she choose her focus on women in democracy as a national security issue? 📡 How to get more women into cybersecurity, and once that’s done, how to inspire them to choose policy careers rather than much better paying tech business? 🇷🇺 The transatlantic differences in using women empowerment in AI as a national security strategy and how Russia managed to get it right? 🦋 Trap of ageism & sexism in the current paradigm forgetting native leadership talents of women?
Link to Video:
Where? 😎 #LuciaKlestincova channel on #youtube 🎧 Lights on Europe on your #podcast platforms and Spotify!
On 6 February 2024, Cheryl Miller, DLI Director, joined an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Microsoft panel on “Building a Skilled Cyber Security Workforce: Insights from OECD Countries,” taking place in Paris and online.
Digital Decade for Europe Skills Targets Embrace Gender Equity
Joined by experts from Poland, Ireland and France, Ms. Miller’s interventions focused on ways to increase participation of girls and women as ICT specialists in the EU, including in cybersecurity. She underscored that this is consistent with the aim of closing the gender gap in these fields articulated in the Digital Decade for Europe mission.
The OECD event also showcased results from two recent OECD reports:
“Building a Skilled Cyber Security Workforce in Europe” Report
“Building a Skilled Cyber Security Workforce in Five Countries” Report
“The first countries to recognize diversity in cybersecurity as critical to national and regional security will definitely reap the rewards,” Ms Miller concluded.
A Successful Footprint for Increasing Digital Skills and Tech Entrepreneurship Among Women
By Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, Head of W20 EU Delegation
(Originally published on the Sasakawa Peace Foundation website in English and Japanese)
W20 Series – Special Feature on Digital and Reskilling The G20’s official engagement group Women 20 (W20) has identified the gender digital divide as one of its key challenges and has included it in its policy recommendations to G20 countries. While there are concerns that the accelerating pace of technological advancement in recent years will further widen the gender digital divide, initiatives to close the gender digital divide have started around the world by utilizing digital technologies and reskilling. As a spin-off of the feature articles of W20 Series which introduce works and activities of the W20 and its delegates, this series will showcase the case studies of empowering women through digital technologies and reskilling women in the G20 countries. (W20 India Website: https://w20india.org/)
The Digital Leadership Institute, a Brussels-based nonprofit I founded in 2014 with the mission of promoting inclusive digital transformation, has benefitted from such EU funding schemes in order to deliver innovative and award-winning programs that increase participation of girls and women in “ESTEAM”—or “entrepreneurship and arts powered by STEM”—and that contribute to women’s economic agency as professionals, entrepreneurs and leaders across the board.
We4Change aims to connect girls and women for environemntal change with digital and innovation (Source: DLI)Over the past ten years, DLI programs have positively impacted tens of thousands of girls and women across Europe and beyond, and have advanced the state of the art for practices that are successful at promoting digital entrepreneurship and leadership by women, many that DLI was first to identify. These initiatives include the Ada Awards, international awards recognising outstanding girls and women in digital research and careers and their supporting people and organisations; We4Change, a project that aims to contribute to the EU Youth Strategy by empowering young girls and women with digital and innovation skills, to have an active role in addressing the challenges posed by climate change; inQube, a global network promoting women-led, digitally-driven and digitally-enabled enterprises with the “Move It Forward” flagship female digital starter events; Digital Muse, a European network promoting ‘STEM-powered entrepreneurship and the arts’ for girls (Digital Muse); Digital Brusselles, Europe’s first female tech incubator; and Cypro, a cyber professional training and career placement program for women. Of those noted, Move It Forward and Cypro especially embody best practices to attract girls and women to digital fields.
Move It Forward (MIF) supports female entrepreneurs (Source: DLI)Move It Forward (“MIF”) is the flagship event of DLI’s inQube platform promoting women tech starters. It is a two-day project-driven entrepreneurship event for teen and adult women of all skill levels with the aim of supporting them to become technology entrepreneurs. MIF provides beneficiaries the mission, tools, community, resources and know-how to deliver tech and tech-enabled solutions for challenges that disproportionately impact girls and women and their communities. Each MIF event includes digital skills trainings, project work and pitching, networking with community members and partners, and recognition and awards that take the form of mentorship and long-term support for projects launched.
In 2020, Move It Forward was the subject of a European Commission-funded program that also delivered an open-source “MIF+ Toolkit” in order to permit other organisations around the world to benefit from the approach, materials and best-practices assembled over a decade of successfully deploying the MIF initiative. By 2023, Move It Forward had been delivered in twenty-five countries, reaching over twelve-hundred participants and launching more than two hundred women-led tech startups, about fifty of which are ongoing.
Cypro Nurtures Professional Women in IT (Source: DLI)In addition, in 2017, DLI piloted the Cypro (“Cyber Professional”) training and career placement program whose mission is to educate and matriculate women with five or more years of non-technical work experience into expert roles within IT organisations. After completing a preliminary training period, Cypro beneficiaries join a company as paid IT associates through an on-the-job training/apprenticeship program that lasts up to three years. During this time, participants also spend a percentage of their workweek pursuing IT certification programs through DLI and its partners, AWS, Cisco, Oracle et al., in emerging technology fields that align with their job role, including software development, cybersecurity, cloud computing, IoT, big data, machine learning, AI, etc. Over the course of the Cypro program, DLI also delivers mentorship and community activities for beneficiaries, as well as staffing, evaluation, advancement and DEI support toward client IT organisations.
In its first year, ninety women of diverse backgrounds took part in the Brussels Cypro pilot and completed a Cisco IT Fundamentals bootcamp and AWS Associate trainings. Half were awarded IT certifications, twenty-five percent became Trainer certified, and to date, five percent have become full-time employed with IT organisations. During Covid, Cypro was put on hold and is now being relaunched in collaboration with Amazon Web Services as an official part of their European re/Start program.
Initiatives like Move It Forward and Cypro are successful because they embody best practices to attract and retain girls and women in technology fields. Like all DLI programs, MIF and Cypro explicitly target girls and women as beneficiaries, addressing an underlying negative attitude girls and women sometimes harbour toward STEM, especially Technology, and entrepreneurship. These programs also deliver gender-responsive digital skills trainings, meaning that program design and delivery address factors that specifically ensure success for girl and women program participants. In addition, Cypro delivers skills in deep and emerging tech fields, while MIF teaches key digital skills that are usable in startup and workplace environments.
Move It Forward Team-building (Source: DLI)
Gathering at Digital Muse Event (Source: DLI)
For long-term sustainability, we focus on building community around all DLI activities, which is perhaps the single-most important factor in achieving a more inclusive digital transformation over the long-term. MIF and Cypro also focus on providing access to mentorship and resources, including financing and startup advice, which connects program participants to a larger ecosystem. Finally, a major barrier to women making the transition into tech fields is that they cannot necessarily undertake effort that either involves a financial outlay and/or represents unpaid work—thus reflecting in their lower participation in tech bootcamps, startup weekends, skills trainings, etc. DLI programs therefore offer scholarships to participants, prioritise remunerated training and apprenticeship opportunities, and support job placement and/or business launch and scaling in order to shorten the path toward financial independence for program participants. This also represents a critical success factor in getting women into and keeping them in technology fields.
Unfortunately, work like the foregoing is difficult and successes far too few. Despite an increase in European programs that support work that tackles underrepresentation of girls and women in STEM at ecosystem, capacity-building and grass roots levels, negative trends have not reversed over the past decade. DLI’s own successes especially have been limited, most notably by a lack of sustained funding to support continued effort on our critical path, and by an inability for us to scale successes across broader geographies. In the case of Cypro, the very barriers to entry that keep women out of the tech sector are also those that DLI has encountered in sustaining the program and followup action to ensure participant success.
Replicating and scaling innovative initiatives, like those that DLI leads, is not an unusual challenge in Europe, a geography of 550 million people speaking dozens of languages across almost thirty sovereign countries. At the same time, a persistent lack of funding for programs promoting gender equity, including in STEM, is a symptom of institutionalised discrimination across all fields that also manifests as a lack of policy priority-setting on such issues. Public sector leadership in this context is critical, however, because it also stimulates private sector uptake of approaches to promote gender parity, and thereby engenders a virtuous circle of action tackling problems like the gender digital divide.
Gender digital divide addressed at W20 summit (Source: W20 India)
In her 2023 State of the European Union speech, European Commission President Von der Leyen highlighted EU policies that support greater participation of girls and women in STEM sectors, especially tech, which include broad-sweeping digital skilling, some that targeted underserved demographics, as well as programs promoting women entrepreneurs.
These actions, along with global leadership like the W20’a ongoing work to close the Digital Gender Divide and recent W20 India breakthrough to institutionalise a Women’s Empowerment Working Group at the G20 level, give us room to be optimistic about what the future will bring on this critical subject.
Author’s Profile
Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck is Director of the Brussels-based Digital Leadership Institute, Head of EU Delegation to the G20 Women20, and Chair of the Education, Skills Development and Labour Force Participation Task Force, 2023 G20 India Women20.
Lessons from the EU on Closing the Digital Gender Divide
By Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, Head of W20 EU Delegation
(Originally published on the Sasakawa Peace Foundation website in English and Japanese)
W20 Series – Special Feature on Digital and Reskilling The G20’s official engagement group Women 20 (W20) has identified the gender digital divide as one of its key challenges and has included it in its policy recommendations to G20 countries. While there are concerns that the accelerating pace of technological advancement in recent years will further widen the gender digital divide, initiatives to close the gender digital divide have started around the world by utilizing digital technologies and reskilling. As a spin-off of the feature articles of W20 Series which introduce works and activities of the W20 and its delegates, this series will showcase the case studies of empowering women through digital technologies and reskilling women in the G20 countries. (W20 India Website: https://w20india.org/)
In this article, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, Head of W20 EU Delegation and Director of the Brussels-based Digital Leadership Institute that promotes women’s empowerment using digital technologies, will introduce EU initiatives in two parts. In Vol. 1, the importance of bridging the digital divide and the EU government policies are discussed, which is followed by Vol. 2, which will feature the specific initiatives for digital reskilling being conducted in the EU.
A Worldwide Phenomenon of the Digital Disruption
Anywhere in the world today, a woman is: • Less likely to be online; • More likely to have low or no digital skills; • Much less likely to be an IT professional; and • Far less likely to launch a technology-driven startup.
As a result of the foregoing, women are at greater risk of being excluded by the digital disruption that has transformed society—a situation exacerbated by climate change, pandemics, geopolitical disruption, and economic uncertainty. This reality poses a great risk to women’s financial independence, economic resilience more generally, and to sustainable development.
Percentage of female and male population using the Internet, 2020 (Source: ITU)
A key characteristic of the digital disruption which cuts across geographic locations and socio-economic conditions is that, no matter where she is in the world, a woman is less likely to be online than a man. Of the Earth’s 7.8 billion human population as of 2020, women make up fifty-seven percent and men sixty-two percent of people who are online, reflecting 234 million fewer women online overall. Despite a surge in online participation during the COVID pandemic, the rate at which women go online continues to lag behind. This ubiquitous and persistent trend represents the digital divide compounded by the gender gap which, without focused effort to address it, risks deepening. This global phenomenon is recognised as the gender digital divide.
In countries where digitalisation has a firmer hold, women are still less likely to have digital skills, take up formal computer science and other STEM studies, or hold technical and leadership roles in IT organizations. Globally, the founder of a technology-driven enterprise is five times more likely to be a man than a woman, and in many places, the ratio is closer to ten-to-one. In addition to the yawing social divide this reality reflects, it also represents a loss for the global economy and for women themselves who are unable to fully realise their potential as economic agents in an increasingly digital society.
The UN reported that bringing women and girls online could boost global GDP. (Source: ITU)
In 2013, the UN reported that bringing 600 million women and girls online could boost global GDP by up to $18B. A European study in 2018 suggests that greater participation of women in the ICT sector would contribute as much as €16B annually to the European economy alone. Especially as a response to the COVID-induced “She-cession,” action to tackle the gender digital divide presents an opportunity to improve women’s economic agency, address the digital skills and job gap, and promote sustainable development.
As a path out of economic adversity, women everywhere turn to entrepreneurship, making women-led enterprise one of the most dynamic facets of the global economy, although it is not a consistent policy priority. GEM research in 2019 indicates that $5T would be added to the world’s economy if women participated in entrepreneurship at the same rate as men. The COVID pandemic disproportionately impacted women—forcing millions out of the workplace, many permanently. In response, entrepreneurship is and will continue to be a key factor in sustaining financial independence for women and supporting economic recovery.
In the digital society, economic participation is increasingly linked to skills that support both digitally-enabled and digitally-driven entrepreneurship, where women face a de facto disadvantage in both areas. A lack of digital skills to build, launch and manage enterprises, including in online marketplaces and supply chains, creates a persistent barrier to entry for women seeking to participate as entrepreneurs in the digital economy. A lack of specialised digital skills, including as experts in academia and industry, further limits the ability of women to contribute as innovators, researchers, entrepreneurs and leaders in the digital society. The uptake of artificial intelligence, and the inherent risk it poses to intensifying social inequities, can further amplify this problem.
The Policy and Measures of the EU to Bridge the Digital Gap
On March 5, 2020, Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman President of the European Commission, launched the EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025 whose key objectives include closing gender gaps in the labour market and achieving equal participation between women and men across all sectors of the economy. In January 2023, the Digital Decade for Europe 2030 policy went into force which explicitly aims to close the gender gap among IT specialists as a key driver for achieving the twin digital and green transitions in Europe.
President Ursula von der Leyen launced the EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025. (Source: The European Union)
Increasing participation of women in digital fields is thus prioritised as a contributor to achieving the European Green Deal which, among other things, aims to make Europe a net-zero emitter of greenhouse gases by 2050. This priority has also set off a cascading set of programming and policy actions in Europe to tackle inequalities related to skills, care and other issues that might otherwise constrain women from enjoying full economic agency and fairly contributing to the digital society.
In this context, during her recently concluded mission as EU Commissioner for Research, Mariya Gabriel instituted several ground-breaking changes to the €95.5B Horizon Europe funding scheme which aim to increase gender equality across the European Research Area (ERA), and thus in STEM fields and startup. These include a focus on gender balance among Horizon Europe research program evaluators, advisory bodies and researchers; and targets for women-led companies and advisory structures within entrepreneurship programs, a dedicated initiative to support women-led startups, and a women innovators prize.
EU Commissioner for Research, Mariya Gabriel initiated to increase gender equality across the European Research Area. (Source: The European Union)
Leadership like the foregoing is essential to achieving digital equity and improved economic agency for women in Europe because EU multi-annual financial framework (MFF) funding schemes, like Horizon Europe, underwrite countless EU member state activities that contribute to increased participation of women in STEM and startup. MFF and other funding programs such as ERASMUS+, which specifically supports the European entrepreneurship ecosystem, contribute critical funding for EU civil society-led digital skills and startup programs, many of which aim to increase gender equality in technology fields, including entrepreneurship.
All together, the policy, funding and program-delivery ecosystem in the European Union has become increasingly successful at programming like the foregoing which promotes digital equity for women’s economic agency, contributes to financial independence for women, and makes inroads on the sustainable development goals and other global challenges. This approach deserves replication, all or in part, because it contributes to:
• Reducing the risk of marginalisation posed to women by digital disruption;
• Addressing the global digital skills and job gaps;
• Supporting a pathway to increased workforce participation and entrepreneurship by women;
• Harnessing the creative capacity of women for sustainable economic development; and
• Promoting women’s full economic, social and political agency.
Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck is Director of the Brussels-based Digital Leadership Institute, Head of EU Delegation to the G20 Women20, and Chair of the Education, Skills Development and Labour Force Participation Task Force, 2023 G20 India Women20.
The Digital Leadership InstituteTeam is actively involved in outreach activities with partners and stakeholders around the world that promote ESTEAM* leadership by girls and women. Below are outreach activities in which DLI was involved in Fall 2023.
*Entrepreneurship and Art powered by Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
15 June 2023 – G20 Women20 India 2023 Summit (Mahabalipuram, India): On 15 June 2023 in Mahabalipuran, India, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined the final meeting of the G20 Women20 India 2023 Presidency in her joint capacities as Co-HOD of the EU Delegation and Chair of the W20India Skills Development, Education and Labour Force Participation Task Force.
10-19 July 2023 – UN High Level Policy Forum on Sustainable Development (New York, New York): On 15 July 2023 in New York City, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined a side-event hosted by the Women’s Major Group of the UN High Level Policy Forum on Sustainable Development, in her capacity as Co-HOD of the EU W20 Delegation and DLI Director.
16-19 September 2023 – UN SDGSummit 2023 (New York, New York): On 16-19 September in New York City, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined the UN General Assembly convening of the SDG Summit 2023 and SDG Action Weekend, in her capacity as Co-Head of the EU W20 Delegation and DLI Director.
20 September 2023 – womenENcourage Conference (Trondheim, Norway): On 20 September, Katja Legisa, DLI Entrepreneurship Director, contributed to a panel on Interventions and Initiatives of Gender Inclusion in Academia and Industry, as part of the ACM womENcourage conference in collaboration with the EUGAIN, European Network For Gender Balance in Informatics, a COST Action funded by the European Union.
28 September 2023 – Rethinking Harmony in Asia 2023 (Online): 28 September, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, provided a keynote on “Ensuring and Ethical and Safer Digital World,” as part of The Asian Network virtual conference on Rethinking Harmony in Asia 2023.
23-24 November 2023 – UNESCO STEM Alliance Conference (Venice, Italy): On 23-24 November in Venice, Italy, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined a panel at the UNESCO STEM Alliance Conference as part of her recent UNESCO research on “Gender in STEM in Southeast Europe.”
To browse past activities with DLI and our partners, please click here. Be sure to also visit our calendar, sign up for the DLI Newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram in order to keep up with DLI events and activities!
In an era where digital interactions play a significant role in our lives, it’s crucial to be informed and understand potential online threats. Join us 15th December for a 2h engaging and informative online workshop on sexting, sextortion and non consensual intimate image abuse, where we will elaborate on the nature of these trends, identify their consequences on the victims and propose measures to deal with them.
What you will get out of this workshop:
Become aware of different online threat types
Understand how a harassments case is set in order to recognise its signs early on
Learn the coping mechanises and responding strategies
The workshop is organised in the framework of the Erasmus + OnSafe project which focuses at equipping young people and teenagers with the necessary knowledge, skills and tools to prevent being exposed to sexually related online risks and threats, through the development, piloting and implementation of a series of interactive workshops.
The Women STEM UP project, which started in November 2022, aims at tackling a key challenge related to the persistent gender gap in STEM higher education i.e., Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics; and consequently, in the labour market. STEM graduates are in high demand in the labour market and STEM jobs are among the most highly paid. The project has just published its first newsletter portraying the work done so far.
Check out the the project’s work done to understand students’ and teachers’ experiences regarding gender in STEM and the development of the first training prototype!
Join the OnSafe Project by DLI to address sexually related online risks. We invite young people aged 13-35 to participate in our anonymous survey, helping us to identify training needs and enhance online safety.
Why Participate?
1. Identify training needs: Assess your knowledge and help tailor educational programs for specific needs.
2. Anonymity and confidentiality: Your identity will remain anonymous, and data will be securely stored for the project’s purposes.
3. Make a difference: Contribute to a safer digital space, foster responsible digital citizenship, and empower future generations.
How to Get Involved:
1. Visit the survey link and choose your language: Take the survey in English or in French.
2. Spread the word: Encourage others aged 13-35 to participate and help gather valuable insights.
Your participation in the Onsafe Project survey contributes to a safer online environment. Join us today to empower young individuals and promote responsible digital behavior. Together, we can create a safer digital space for all.
