Islet and SAP have joined forces to increase diversity and gender equality in tech industry. In the beginning of 2021, the companies organize a free-of-charge challenge related to user interface design and application development with the #mimmitkoodaa (#womencode) movement, which has grown rapidly in the past years in Finland.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has estimated that over 90 % of future work will require advanced digital skills. Hence, equality in tech industry serves the entire society in the long run. It is also important that women are involved in developing technology, so that the women and girls’ needs are considered better in these solutions. In addition, diversity drives innovations, which are the lifeline of continuously evolving and developing companies.
Islet and SAP have created a two-step challenge, which aims to make an impact in many ways. The women get to indirectly contribute to a charity cause of protecting the Baltic sea as part of already traditional #IsletgoesItämeri campaign. In the ”Move with Purpose” challenge, to be launched on Friday 22nd January 2021, the women first design a User Interface for the application and then code the application. The UI designing and programming are both carried out on SAP’s design and development platforms. The end goal is to create an app which is used for submitting and tracking of walking, running, and/or cycling kilometers in the #IsletgoesItämeri campaign. Also, euros that accumulate in relation to the kilometers are tracked and finally donated to WWF to protect the Baltic Sea.
Promoting diversity is nothing new to Islet nor SAP. On the contrary – Islet Group has always been a pioneer for a diverse and versatile working and thinking in the world of technology. In an industry where males form a vast majority, Islet is a rarity: the company was founded by a woman and throughout its 23-year-old history the CEO has been a woman. Women also form 50 % of the executive board and 52 % of all of company’s employees. We are proud to be different. We genuinely want to improve gender equality in technology and encourage women to pursue careers in IT.
Islet’s partner SAP – a multinational, world’s leading solution provider for ERP systems and technologies – strongly believes that a diverse workforce is an important competitive advantage. For 10 years SAP has continuously increased the percentage of women in their management positions. According to their own data, currently 27 % of its leaders and 34 % of all its employees are women. Even though change comes slowly, in recent years, SAP’s efforts for more diverse working life have been widely noted – f. ex. Forbes ranked SAP as the best employer for diversity for 2020, and for second consecutive year, SAP was also selected for inclusion in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, which recognizes companies that are committed to transparent gender reporting and advancing women’s equality.
Islet and SAP whole-heartedly support #mimmitkoodaa (#womencode) -movement and promote diversity in the field of technology. The purpose of the movement is not only to encourage women interested of the software industry to learn coding and pursue careers in IT, but also to make it more accessible to them. Together with its partners companies, the movement provides free of charge trainings and events for women with diverse backgrounds and without any prior experience of coding. The movement has already inspired more than 6000 women to join and the number continues to soar.
Learn more about Islet’s and SAP’s Mimmit Koodaa Challenge here and sign up!
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