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DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality conference

The 8th of March marked the International Women’s Day which is celebrated all over the world.

On this occasion the Women’s Committee of the Chamber of Commerce had the great pleasure of hosting a conference on equality and diversity.

This year the United Nations’ theme of the International Women’s Day was “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”. In this context three speakers with different approaches to this topic were invited to give an insight into their respective fields.

The event was opened by Mette Gade from 360 Law Firm, who welcomed the crowd to their premises, after which the chairman of the Women’s Committee, Anita Wagner Feddersen, who moderated the event, invited H.E. the French Ambassador to the stage.

The first speaker of the conference was Dorthe Kerschus, Client Executive Partner at Atos, who spoke of some of the challenges women face in the workplace. A key take-away from Dorthe’s talk was that the socialization of girls and boys from early childhood impacts the way adult women and men behave. As she pointed out, men tend to seek promotions when they are at 80%, whereas women tend to wait until they reach 120%, which, at no fault of their own, can be part of the explanation of why women are underrepresented in the corporate top.

The second speaker of the afternoon was Helle Malmvig. Helle Malmvig is a Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. Her current area of research is the development of women’s rights in the Middle East. In correlation with the theme of this day, Helle reported how the younger generation of Iranian women have used social media to gain awareness about the injustice and violence against the women of Iran, by installing special software on their phones, but also how the regime utilizes malware to trace the rebels through facial recognition and GPS trackers. Thus, revolution and war have entered a whole new era where digitalization has gained a more important role than ever before.

The third and final speaker of the event was Tahmina Salik, an Afghan-Danish woman, who has founded Dansk-Afghansk Kvinde og Diaspora and PAREI, through which she fights for Afghan women’s rights. During her very emotional talk she told the participants about the dangerous and suppressive conditions women live under during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. She also spoke of how the current situation in Afghanistan is so severe that even the smallest thing can be of great help. Hosting and participating in events with this focus, and even likes and shares on social media are manners of making sure that the women of Afghanistan are not forgotten, and that the fight lives on.

If you wish to support the work done by Tahmina and her colleagues, you can donate through this page, or sign up for a membership to the organization: https://dakdif.org/membership/

The conference was followed by a networking cocktail, where the attendees were able to ask the speakers questions and meet each other across nationalities and professions.

The Danish-French Chamber of Commerce would like to thank 360 Law Firm for a fruitful and professional collaboration, and for hosting us in their beautiful offices by the sea.

Thank you to Queen’s Delight and Kagerlighed for providing us with beautiful cakes for the networking event and thank you to Les Grand Chais de France for the lovely wine.

A great thanks also goes to the French Ambassador for his participation and engagement with this event.

Finally, we would like the thanks the three speakers, Dorthe Kerschus, Helle Malmvig and Tahmina Salik for their participation in the event. Your contribution and insight were much appreciated and admired.

Please, click on the below picture to see all the pictures of the event.