Written by Rajina Shrestha

Maybe I talk with respect to a very small sample group, but the efforts I see in a few work-spaces in Kathmandu to increase the number of women in their own office to start with, makes me wonder if the tipping point to having women in mostly male dominated workforce (like tech) is near. Still, as they embark on a mission to have more women on board, they find it is not quite in line with what communities of Women in Tech tell them about the abundance of skilled women in the field.

A few weeks back, I decided to go to Indonesia through an organization named AIESEC. I went there for the project to teach English to Indonesian kids. I had never been to any other country before so, probably, a lot of things surprised me. From people’s dresses to their living style, everything was new to me. I came to realize that the world is so very different and contains variety of cultures, styles, and people.

Teaching experience(Pintu Elok)

Indonesia is a very hot country. There are only 2 seasons there: summer and rainy.

This July, a group of about 10 women students of technology gathered together to participate in a week-long boot camp organized by Women Leaders in Technology (wlitorg_new). The boot camp was aimed at empowering young women to pursue myriad opportunities and make a significant mark in the field of technology.

We had an amazing week where we organized various sessions to develop the participants’ technical skills in computing, programming, app development etc. In addition, there were non-technical sessions where speakers from different fields were invited to help participants understand about different aspects of professional development.

Talking about the Nepalese community, women are still lagging behind in various opportunities. According to the Nepalese interim constitution 2062/63, 33% of every work is reserved for the women, but talking about the women empowerment and leadership in technology, they are far behind. From many years, there has been a great misconception among the people that only men should do the technical works. So, for many years, women were involved only in household works and other non-technical works. But along with the time, there also have been some changes about this misconception. In fact, we can see that some women are really getting into the technological world with gadgets and a bunch of wires on their hands today.