happy international women's day 2023!
International Women’s Day is celebrated every March 8th to highlight women’s achievements and encourage the empowerment of women. It is also a day to reflect on the work that has been done to achieve gender equality in all walks of life and what more can be done.
Here at DPAS, we’d like to take this moment to celebrate the incredible women we have working as part of our team. Data protection and cyber security as industries are typically thought of as being male dominated. This notion is slowly being challenged and it was particularly evident at PrivSec London last week, an international conference bringing together data protection, privacy and security professionals, where it was observed that there were a lot more women in attendance this year.
At DPAS over 50% of our workforce is female. DPAS is committed to driving inclusion and diversity, and most of our positions of leadership are held by strong, incredible women. Since more women are joining the industry, we’d like to take this moment to encourage everyone not to underestimate women, as this is something that the women of DPAS occasionally experience, and to include us in your conversations.
This year’s theme for international women’s day by the United Nations (UN) is ‘DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality’. The UN has highlighted that women make up only 22% of artificial intelligence (AI) workers globally. A global analysis of 133 AI systems across industries found that 44.2% demonstrate gender bias, and a survey of women journalists from 125 countries found that 73% had suffered online violence in the course of their work.
The UN is passionate to encourage more women to join sectors such as data protection and cyber security, and technology will result in more innovations that will meet women’s needs and promote gender equality. Excluding women is costly, as per the UN Women’s Gender Snapshot 2022 report “women’s exclusion from the digital world has shaved $1 trillion from the gross domestic product of low- and middle-income countries in the last decade—a loss that will grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025 without action”. Including more women in these sectors will reduce gender bias, and drive more solutions that will work for everyone!
To see that data protection and cyber security is becoming more gender diverse is encouraging, and while there is still more work to be done, we look forward to connecting with the new and existing female forces in the sector we work in. Don’t hesitate to reach out!
If you’d like to find out more about our team behind DPAS, you can visit our “Meet Our Team” page, or check out our staff profiles on Mel, our CEO, Nat, our Head of Consultancy, Emma, our Office and Training Manager, and Charlotte, our Senior Data Protection Paralegal.
In addition, if you’d like to join data protection and work for DPAS we are currently hiring for a Marketing Executive role. Contact us if you’d like to apply or apply directly.
