Wooing Women Back to Tech Jobs

The number of women joining online technology courses  has seen an unprecedented increase in India compared to the rest of the world, says Coursera’s Global Skills Report 2021. Published a fortnight ago, it showed overall enrolments in women increased from 25% to 35% in 2020 for Coursera’s online courses and the percentage of women who enrolled for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) jumped to 33% in 2020 from 22% the year before.  

This may hardly be surprising given the higher number of girls taking up engineering courses in India in the last decade. Today, more than one-third of employees in the IT sector are women thanks to several initiatives taken by multinationals encouraging women to join the workforce.

HCL Technologies’ iBelieve and Wipro’s WOW program encourage women to return back to work after a long career break due to maternity and child care. The iBelieve the initiative was so successful 99% of female employees who took a maternity break were reportedly returning to work at the company.

Opportunities to get trained and upskilled to current market demands are also plenty. There are online courses, interactive virtual classes, certifications, and several options now available at very competitive prices. Networking workshops, leadership talk sessions, and self-paced learning modules are some of the courses that are crucial to bringing returning employees up to speed.  These refresher courses typically extend for 2-3 months with 10 learning hours a week.

Coursera’s Report came up with another interesting finding. After analyzing performance it was found that all it took was 35 to 70 hours of training for recent graduates and mid-career changers to develop entry-level, digital job skills. Someone with no degree or technology experience could be made job-ready in 80 to 240 hours.

So if you have been on a long break from work but would like to get back to work, there are opportunities for women, in India. It needs a bit of researching to find out what the market needs and getting the right courses.

 Author: Dr. Anjana Das