On December 19th, Flux IT hosted the “All Things Gender” meetup, wrapping up the reflection and debate series for fluxers promoted throughout the year with an encounter open to the community.
Alfonsina Chesini, CEO at Flux IT, started the talk bringing the audience up to speed with the meetup’s driver:
“I think it’s great that you joined a meetup on this topic, which we have been working on throughout the year at Flux IT. This workshop has been very important to us, since in the IT industry there’s low women participation, which is less than 16%. This issue, added to other matters that we are facing as a society, became relevant within Flux IT and that is why we chose to bring up the matter of women’s role, not only in the industry but in society, and how we behave in terms of relationships.”
Alfonsina kicked off the meetup with a brief overview of the history of women in the IT area, highlighting that their participation decreased from the beginning of the industry until today. Then, she introduced Amanda Lozina and Vicente Garay, the meetup’s moderators, who work in the Gender area at Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and recently joined the Ministerio de la Mujer, Políticas de Género y Diversidad Sexual (Office of Women’s issues, Gender Politics and Sexual Diversity) in Buenos Aires.
“Amanda and Vicente helped us shape this workshop, which was made up of five encounters in La Plata and Buenos Aires city, where we plunged into understanding different concepts: gender, stereotypes, women’s role, rules, etc. The process that we’ve gone through truly struck us and we thought it was important to share it so that many others could see what else there is to gender”.
Alfonsina Chesini, CEO at Flux IT
Moving forward on the selected topic, Vicente explained why it’s important to approach the matter of gender:
“There’s a need to start talking about gender, its issues and to include a gender perspective in all areas of life. Every institution is influenced by personal relationships and, based on that, thinking about how we interact with each other is a constant challenge.To start talking about gender allows us to put an end to inequalities, which are historical and have been taking root in society for a long time.”
Vicente Garay
The talk cut across reflections upon the concept of “gender”, roles and stereotypes, the idea of “heteronormativity” and the systems that lead to inequality in relationships. Moreover, they reviewed some regulations linked to the topic, such as laws on gender identity, sexual and reproductive health, same-sex marriage, women’s protection, gender and education, among others.
The encounter concluded motivating the audience to develop more opportunities related to the topic, both for internal training and for the institutionalization of gender perspective, seeing it as a collective issue that should be approached collectively as well.
“Being able to question, denaturalize and discussing these matters begins to dismantle some quite violent and unequal structures. It’s not always a free choice to perpetrate violence against a co-worker as regards any of those previously mentioned inequalities, but it’s not until we know that we realize we are perpetrating that violence or that we are victims of it. We are glad that Flux IT, as a company, has these spaces.”
Amanda Lozina
The meetup ended with an exchange of ideas and a question and answer period, followed by after-office drinks at Flux IT offices.