Apptractor: I want women to believe in themselves

In April, AppTractor opens the Ladies Code women’s conference “Girls in IT” in Moscow. We asked the organizer of the event, Daria Zykina, whether such events are really needed.

Hi! To be honest, the first thought when you read a press release is that this is some kind of joke. I’m not talking about women in IT, I’m talking about the emphasis on gender in general. That is, for me it sounded as strange as the topic of “men in IT”. Was there really a need for this emphasis on gender, why?

Daria ZykinaHi !

Yes, the emphasis was necessary, because we wanted to raise the problem of the shortage of girls in the IT industry – Facebook, Google and Microsoft have less than 30% of women, and this is despite all the efforts that companies in the United States are making to reduce gender inequality.

We invite only girls to act as experts, thereby we want to show other participants (not only participants) how important it is to develop this direction, invite girls to the industry, how many successful examples there are already in the market of building a career in IT.

Our conference is aimed at gathering girls and telling them that IT is not difficult, but it is interesting that you can become an excellent programmer, designer, tester. We were very surprised when we found out that at one of the departments of the respected institute, girls who studied programming, as a result, at the end of the course, do not go into the profession, because there is a myth that girls are not taken in this specialty, that it is the prerogative of men here.

We don’t want to say that women are worse or better. They just deserve attention, just like men. Once upon a time, computer games were considered not very serious. Now it is the locomotive of the digital economy. It’s the same with gender inequality – now everyone looks at a female programmer or administrator or project manager with surprise and, often, not always positive. Meanwhile, due to their abilities, non-trivial views, skills, women can become a new element of the digital economy. Especially in Russia, where the economy, frankly speaking, is not very good. And we want to show everyone these new opportunities.

Why I stop at this: in the gaming industry, as part of the IT industry, in Russia and the CIS, the proportion of women is relatively large. Moreover, there are many of them among those thanks to whom the domestic industry is developing (I’m talking about Yulia Lebedeva, Lerika Mallaeva, a little earlier this was also true in relation to Alice Chumachenko). That is, women, at least in Russian IT, can hardly be called the “weaker sex”. Or am I wrong?

Over the past months, we have been creating a program for our event. We also thought at first – what’s so difficult about gathering two halls of experts of the fair sex, when everything seems to be fine with them in the industry? What was our surprise when it turned out that not so many girls work in IT.

Julia, Lerica and Alice are in plain sight because they lead/have led such excellent companies. Beautiful “strong” women. But how many developers inside the companies are women? Five, ten percent? Why is that? How can this be changed? Yes, it seems that there are a lot of women in IT, because they are all in plain sight, but in fact this is not the case at all.

Here you have given the names of only three successful girls from the industry. And no one else seems to come to mind. Out of five dozen gaming companies – just a few examples! Even now we are still looking for girls who can cover topics on design, development, analytics, the Internet of Things. One of our sections will be devoted to the cases of successful female entrepreneurs in the field of IT. The projects created by the girls that we managed to find can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

What event personally inspired you to take up such an event?

First of all, there are events for developers, at which I see very few girls in the role of experts and in the hall. Even now, when we talk to companies about performances, we are told: “Only men speak on behalf of our company.” One of our main tasks is to reverse this trend. I want women to believe in themselves!

And the last question: what do you expect from the event?

It is important for me to gather strong experts on one platform, with useful reports, interesting materials that would interest girls and inspire them to come to the IT industry. I want us to somehow break the stereotype that IT is only for men with this event. How many useful, practical, important projects can appear if girls come to the industry. And, of course, we want to do something more than just a conference.

Good luck! Thanks for the interview!

Details about the event can be found here.