Today, President of Latvia welcomed Anna Andersone, Alise Dīrika and Diāna Butina from Riga TechGirls for a discussion at the Riga Castle. ‘Riga TechGirls are making an important contribution to Latvia’s sustainability by helping to move into new profession and add digital skills to the existing skill set. Thank you for showing the pathway to technology to some 6,000 people in various age groups and new avenues for better life, for higher professional and IT output,’ underlined Egils Levits.
Anna Andersone, Alise Dīrika and Diāna Butina explained President Levits how they aspire to create an informal and friendly environment, which encourages women of different ages to learn new skills and discover the opportunities created by technologies. Representatives of Riga TechGirls noted that women graduating from centre’s programmes are very likely to cause disruption in their professional field or even move into new subcategories of IT.
Anna Andersone mentioned that there is still certain stigma attached to women in IT and there is strong evidence to prove that. Employment figures also suggest that nearly a half of the working population will need to move into a different profession in the next decade. This means that programmes targeting teachers, students and people working in different fields and representing different age groups is absolutely essential for raising their awareness about chances in the IT field. There are still some groups without access to digital devices necessary to increase their employability, while youngsters mostly use digital skills for entertainment and have no real skills and knowledge how to use IT for work-related tasks.
President reminded about the need to integrate human rights considerations in the development of digital domain and IT. Transition from analogue to digital should not come at the expense of human rights and opportunities.