Women Go Tech

‘Women Go Tech’ is a Lithuania-based NGO whose mission is to guide women towards careers in tech through mentoring sessions, providing content, organising events, and community building. Two organisations, Infobalt and Global Shapers (an initiative of the World Economic Forum), created ‘Women Go Tech’ in response to the underrepresentation of women in Lithuania’s ICT sector, and the lack of female leaders and ambassadors in the sector.

Collaboration with the business sector

‘Women Go Tech’ helps women enter the sector by providing mentoring sessions led by business professionals, providing tech content, organising events, and fostering a multi-layered community. The organisation has become a strong partner for the business sector, helping women understand the sector's needs and requirements.

Discovery & Acceleration Programmes

The NGO target group is women, although the specific target groups differ based on the different programmes:

• Under the Discovery programme, those seeking to understand tech sector opportunities, specialties, and career paths, regardless of prior knowledge. This course covers 15 hours and includes many events and other community activities.
• Under the Acceleration programme, women committed to requalifying for tech careers, receiving mentorship to set goals, identify competencies, and plan their careers. Women must be adults (18+), with no other restrictions. Companies creating content benefit by showcasing career opportunities, while mentors gain personal growth. This is a 6-month intensive program with mentors, events, tech, and career content.

Both of these programmes are paid, however the organisation offers both programmes for free to Ukrainians (those who remain in Ukraine and those in exile), and also provides scholarships to motivated individuals. They are able to minimise participant costs due to support from companies, as well as grants from Google.org and OSCE.

Researching barriers to entry

"Women Go Tech" aims to continue scaling in the Central and Eastern Europe region with a focus on Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The organisation is conducting two extensive research projects to understand the barriers women face to enter the tech industry, and how to address them. In addition, they are conducting research on how AI impacts the barriers to entry for women within the tech sector, as well as within the education sector. Using these insights, the organisation aims to create a product addressing this issue and tackle it on a regional level, thus increasing the impact and scale of the initiative. In addition, ‘Women Go Tech’ plans to launch a programme dedicated to AI, focusing on encouraging women to use AI tools and leverage them when entering the tech industry.

Why is this a good practice?

This initiative is responding to a real need within the ICT sector: the underrepresentation of women in the ICT sector in Lithuania, and the broader European region. A key aspect of this is empowering women by showcasing various career examples of women of different ages, family statuses, etc., in order to demonstrate the possibilities available to them within the tech industry. In addition, the programmes also covers topics such as the gender pay gap, aging, and maternity leave. A crucial strength of the initiative is the collaboration with both businesses and policymakers to actively reduce Lithuania’s ICT sector gender gap.

The NGO is also receiving recognition in other projects. ‘Women Go Tech’ was selected as a consultant in the EU initiative "EU4Digital" for gender diversity in tech subjects and developed a guidebook for mentorship programs in Eastern Partnership Countries based on Women Go Tech's experience. In March 2024, the mentorship project in Georgia was launched, and Women Go Tech continues to consult with partners. The project received a 1 million euro grant from the European Commission and will run for 3 years, aiming to achieve high impact numbers by employing 40-60% of women in the tech industry through the programme.

In addition, Women Go Tech is running the project "Empowering Girls” with Junior Achievement Lithuania, which visited 250 schools across Lithuania in 2023 with over 300 women that conducted lessons showcasing successful women in tech. 

Having grown from a volunteer-run organisation to what it is today, the organisation has seen its impact through the numbers of women who have successfully re-qualified for the tech industry – demonstrating a concrete example of how the ecosystem can come together for concrete impact. Over the last 8 years, 700+ women re-qualified to the tech sector under the ‘Acceleration’ programme and 19,000+ in the introductory "Discovery" course. In 2024, ‘Women Go Tech’ estimates having 800 participants in its mentorship programme.