"Mediterranean women need more policies to promote their integration in the world of technology"

In the words of Anna Dorangricchia, head of Social and Civil Affairs at the Union for the Mediterranean, the situation of women in the new technologies sector and the businesses that derive from them is critical. Despite the optimism of seeing the numbers improve, Dorangricchia calls for more policies and more efforts to achieve real equality to break the gender gap in this sector. 

Dorangricchia sent this message from the round table "Equality and equity in technology: where to go?", part of the Mediterranean Tech Women Network of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation held in Madrid. Mediterranean Tech Women Network is also a platform project to encourage women's careers in the STEM sector (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), a sector of the economy and society that is largely dominated by men. According to the World Economic Forum's annual report on the gender gap, only 22% of professionals in the new technologies sector are women, while 27.8% of managers were women in 2020.

The conference was opened by the director of the German Liberal Foundation's office in Madrid, David Henneberger, who first congratulated the parties of the new German coalition government for having reached an agreement that has crowned the Socialist Olaf Scholz as the new chancellor. "It is a great moment for liberalism in Germany and in Europe, and this has a lot to do with new technologies and equality between men and women, issues that are at the heart of our liberal ideology," Henneberger stressed. "Cooperation between women in the Mediterranean on new technologies is very important, and thanks to the initiatives of some groups and individuals, high-level dialogues are taking place in this sector. So let's celebrate women today".

Sana Afouaiz, founder and director of WomenPreneur-Initiative, a support platform for women entrepreneurs that specialises in the MENA region and has provided its services to more than 15,000 women since 2016, accompanied her at the opening of the event. Afouaiz thanked the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for its support, "An excellent partner, to promote women to become leading actors of change". The opening also included a speech by the Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, Carme Artigas Brugal. 

They gave way to the round table composed of four women, moderated by Chiraz Bensemmane, a woman entrepreneur and founder of Pitch World Fast & Coach Tribe. The panel included Anna Dorangricchia, Head of Social and Civil Affairs at the Union for the Mediterranean, Rawan Odeh, Manager at Monday.com with extensive experience in dealing with authorities and governments, and Eva Diaz, CEO of Appogeo Digital. 

Opening the roundtable, Anna Dorangricchia lamented the very weak investments and commitments of public administrations in the MENA and Mediterranean region with a gender perspective. "Only 6% of spending on post-covid economic recovery in the MENA region is gender-sensitive. There is a lot of work to be done," said Dorangricchia, with which Rawan Odeh agreed, recalling from her professional background that "If women are not part of the decisions, the measures will never be inclusive enough".

Rawan Odeh also wanted to tell her personal story to exemplify the situation of many women in the Mediterranean basin. As a woman of Palestinian origin, raised in Brooklyn, she was able to observe, upon her return to Palestine, the challenges and walls that women from such environments faced in accessing STEM careers, or any alternative employment that would allow them to overcome a "huge wage gap between men and women". 

In question time, Dorangricchia returned to that point, pointing to the 'environment' as the main challenge to women's advancement and career progression. "One thing that should be urgent is the conditioning of the environment. An environment that would enable women to be entrepreneurs and have better futures. Creating those environments means bureaucratic work, having public services, financial support and the possibility to access knowledge. Without all that, it is almost impossible, especially in the field of technology".