Women Of The Web

PEHIA IS EMPOWERING WOMEN IN TECH AND BRIDGING THE GENDER GAP IN THE INDUSTRY

- Devika S Kartha

We live in a world where everything and everyone is going digital, where we live more in the virtual world than the real one and where the booming information technology sector sees no limits to its potential for growth. Yet there's a rather sad statistic in the midst of this World Wide Web - There are more than three times as many men as women work in the field of IT.

Since the dawn of the age of the IT revolution nearly three decades ago (1993) coding, configuring and computers in general were thought to be a domain that could only be comprehended by the male species. In the early 2000s, women made up a little under 20 percent of computer-science graduates. Since then, the gender gap has grown: Currently, less than 40 percent of computer-science graduates are women. In the earliest days of programming, building computers was deemed a macho thing, and programming was thought to be for typists. Later, when personal computers began to appear in homes and offices, they were promoted as a pastime for boys to play "WarGames" or "Tron," and the contemporary 'bro culture' fuelled the bias.

Today only 17% of technology specific jobs are held by women, but there’s a group of women based out of Kochi who are working towards setting the numbers right and bridging the gap. Enter PEHIA. Enfa Rose George and Sreepriya Radhakrishnan founded PEHIA - a nonprofit organization in January this year to give wings to the women who wished to carve out their own niche in the world of technology.