Women leaders like Dr Behjat Al Yousuf, Associate Director of Dubai Women’s College, are changing the perception that women and technology do not go together.
The second Advancing Arab Women in Technology Workshop was held yesterday at the Millennium Hotel to promote the participation of women in technical fields.
“We want to increase the number of women who are actively using technology for economical development. We know that there are variations in how much women can use technology but the question is how they are using it and for what,” Dr Al Yousuf, Chair of the Centre for Women and Technology for the Arab Region, said.
As a result of the first leadership workshop held in Dubai last year, Digi Girls, a one-day activity, run in partnership with Microsoft, was initiated by the Centre.
“We see a lot of youngsters are on social networking and instant messaging all the time and we want to move the focus from that – to have value of using technology for knowledge dissemination and for them to be better citizens,” she added.
Introduced for the first time outside of Europe and America, Digi Girls was adopted as an initiative of the Centre to expose high school girls to new products that Microsoft has been developing in their laboratories but has not yet introduced to the market.
The girls were given hands-on experience and were engaged in developing something out of different technology streams, such as web development, hardware, robotics and programming.
“After each session, the facilitator decided what was the winning idea, what was the inspiring idea. The winners will get Xboxes, let say, just to inspire them and make them more comfortable with the technology,” she said
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