Girlsday: tech companies open their doors to girls
VELSEN - Over thirty companies and forty schools in North Holland participated in Girls' Day on April 7. During Girls' Day, technical companies as well as technical educational institutions throughout the Netherlands open their doors to girls aged 10 to 15. The girls participated in activities, were introduced to female employees and learned more about STEM work.
One of the regular participants in Girlsday is Tata Steel. The company hosted 240 girls from group 8 and lower secondary school in the company's conference center and at the Academy. "We want to let young people, especially young girls, experience how fun, interesting and important it is to work in engineering," said Sabine Vink, Manager Sustainable Employability at Tata Steel. "With a technical education you can find a wonderful and well-paid job but also make a real contribution. Especially at Tata Steel because the company faces the challenge of reducing the nuisance for the environment as soon as possible. Moreover, we are going to green our production by making steel in a radically new way, namely based on hydrogen instead of coal. This means a radical change where everyone's knowledge, skill, experience and outlook is needed to become stronger as a company."
Girlsday certainly had the desired effect, according to reactions from participating students: "I think it's fun and interesting to see how you put things together. It would be good if more women started doing this kind of work," said Piraye (age 13). Liva (age 14) adds, "I really enjoy working with robots. Today we also built a robot. I like anything to do with technology, but especially so robots. I would like to work with this later."
Girl's Day is an initiative of VHTO, the national expertise agency girls/women and STEM, to introduce girls to STEM at a young age. Activities are therefore organized throughout the country to get them excited about an education and job in these fields. Next year there will be another Girlsday at the beginning of April.