Lisbon: The Aurora Tech Award Women Entrepreneurs and IT Startup Founders team has attracted the attention and appreciation of the Web Summit 2022 in Lisbon.
According to the Web Summit 2022 Gender Equality Survey, 67% of European women working in IT feel they are underpaid compared to men, and half of them face gender discrimination.
inDrive fights for women-founded startups Not willing to accept this injustice, inDrive launched the Aurora Tech Award in cash to draw public and investor attention to the most promising startups founded by women.
Women’s inequality in IT is such a serious issue that Web Summit, one of the largest events in the world dedicated to new technologies, IT and venture investments, invited the inDrive Aurora Tech Award Women Entrepreneurs to discuss the issues of gender imbalance in IT and how few women still have the opportunity to talk about themselves and their experience in IT, as well as many other burning issues that concern women in the industry with participants, in the master class on the second day of the summit. The topic turned out to be so relevant that 900 people registered for the event.
The speakers at the forum were already well-known women entrepreneurs from different countries.
The prominent speaker and Entrepreneur; Sadaffe Abid, who is a social entrepreneur from Karachi, Pakistan and the former COO and CEO of Kashf Foundation. She is the founder of a tech-organization CIRCLE and its current CEO. She is also a Vice Chairperson of Pakistan Microfinance Network. She attended web summit 2022 as a representative of the Circle association. She completed her Master’s at Harvard Kennedy School, Advanced Management Programme at INSEAD, and Bachelor’s at Mount Holyoke. She received the alumni achievement award from Mount Holyoke.
Sadaffe said: “These gender biases still exist. But we need to stay persistent. We need to stay in the game. We can’t play small because we end up closing space for other women. Take up space!”
Along with Sadaffe Abid other prominent attendees of the event includes; Chioma Agwuegbo from Nigeria is the Executive Director at TechHerNG and Convener of the State of Emergency GBV Movement, Ainura Sagyn from Kyrgyzstan is a software developer, co-founder and director of Tazar, and This masterclass at global web submit was moderated by Sardana Mikheeva, VP of Operations at inDrive.
“It is very important for women to be heard, it is important to raise the topic of gender inequality in IT, and fight it. Women can and are already making a great contribution to technological development. Already now, considering the incoming applications, we see how many interesting things women do in the IT field. Events such as the Web Summit give us the opportunity to raise burning questions and find answers to them,” — said Ekaterina Smirnova, head of the Aurora Tech Award project.
Web Summit 2022 attracted more than 70 000 participants, more than 2000 startups, and for the first time 50.5% of women attendees.
About Aurora Tech Award:
The award is a non-profit initiative of California based ride hailing service and a global IT company inDrive which operates regional hubs in the Americas, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the countries of the CIS, available in 700+ cities in 47 countries on five continents and ranks second worldwide among ride-hailing services, with a total of over 150 million downloads. Aside from ride-hailing, inDrive offer other mobility services, including intercity transportation, freight, and cargo services
Aurora Tech Award is an annual prize for women founders of IT startups whose projects have had the most profound impact on world development. The goal is to support women in the field of advanced technologies, especially women entrepreneurs.
The application for participation in the award can be submitted until December 2, 2022.
