Coming to India — Facebook COO’s project for women in technology

If you are a female software engineer and wanted to connect with industry honchos such as Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer) or women entrepreneurs, very soon you could do so directly.

Lean In, an initiative founded by Sandberg, is set to reach India later this month. Anita Borg Institute (ABI), a non-profit organisation focused on the advancement of women in computing, is associating with Lean In and will design courses and provide networking opportunities for women engineers in India.

Lean In circles, as they are known, will enable them to connect with women CEOs over career and business opportunities, according to ABI officials. Circles are small peer groups that meet regularly to learn, share together physically or virtually, which is common in places like the Silicon Valley.

Talking to

Business Line , Geetha Kannan, India Representative of Anita Borg Institute (ABI) said that the company is planning to bring in the ‘Lean In’ initiative and aid them with learning tools. Discrimination against women at workplaces coupled with societal pressures has resulted in women not taking up engineering as a profession as compared to men.

Also, there are issues of women being unable to continue with their careers due to marriage and such factors, said Kannan. With Lean In, ABI will develop videos, training, and resource materials to help women in technology. “Six-seven women can get together, form a community across different companies, learn and discuss different topics such as cloud computing, big data, analytics using technology and other latest tech developments,” said Kannan.

Other issues that women face have to do with an inability to access learning tools within a company and gender discrimination, according to industry watchers. Companies such as Dell, GE, Cisco, Yahoo, Wipro, Infosys and others have initiatives that encourage women to form communities which can discuss and resolve their issues but there is no initiative that reaches out to women engineers across different companies. In a recent forum held at Cisco, Liz Centoni, Vice-President and General Manager, Service Provider Access Group, Cisco Systems told a gathering of women engineers that opportunities for women to connect, discuss their contributions to organisations and build skills to advance their careers are very important. ABI is also planning to talk to some universities in a bid to educate and connect women engineers at an early stage in their careers. While, in India, female engineering graduates have more than doubled from 125,000 in 2000 to 275,000 in 2010, they still represent only 28 per cent of the IT workforce.