Science and tech a focus for International Women’s Day

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 04/03/2025

“By bridging the gender gap in accessing and shaping science and technology, we clear the remaining bottlenecks to equal opportunities and create technology that serves more people and the planet”, UN Women says prior to International Women’s Day celebrated on March 8. But background to the celebrations could have been more optimistic.

With current rate of development, global gender balance will be reached in 2158, according to World Economic Forum. One of Donald Trump’s first actions back in the US presidential office was to crack down on diversity, equity and inclusion policies and a number of big companies have followed his guideline downgrading DEI ambitions. 

The theme for this year’s day is “For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.”  The 2025 International Women’s Day comes ahead of UN’s 69th Commission on the Status of Women, which will focus on results of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action on gender equality and women’s rights that this year celebrates its 30th anniversary.

So, together, let’s Accelerate Action to speed up the rate of progress worldwide, the organisers of the day say.

“The 30th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action is an unmissable chance to remind global leaders and activists that our shared future depends on gender equality and empowering all women and girls”, says UN Women.

“Closing the digital gender divide could save $500 billion over the next five years. Technology must be a force for equality, not exclusion. Support the Global Digital Compact and enact policies that bridge the digital gender divide, ensuring equal access and leadership for all women and girls in technology”

Takeaways from UN Women:

• For 89% of governments, ending violence against women is a top priority today, and 193 countries have legal measures against it.  

• Data shows that countries with domestic violence laws have seen less cases of violence against women. 

• Most of the world has reached parity in education. By bridging the gender gap in accessing and shaping science and technology, we clear the remaining bottlenecks to equal opportunities and create technology that serves more people and the planet. 

• More States have strengthened care services and 32% of countries globally now promote better pay and safe working conditions for care workers.  

• There are 112 countries with a national plan to engage women in peace and security processes – a significant increase from 19 countries in 2010.

International Women’s Day (IWD) has been observed since the early 1900’s. Following a decision agreed at Copenhagen in Denmark in 1911, International Women’s Day was honoured for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on 19 March. More than one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination. International Women’s Day was marked for a first time by the United Nations in 1975.

Moonshot News reports about IT and Media with a special focus on the situation for women: Generative artificial intelligence could be a stepping stone for women in IT. In the media, women also struggle to make a career as only 24% of top editors are women. Here are a few of the past year’s many news stories about women in IT and Media.

77.8% of women experience age based discrimination at work at some stage in their careers. Only 12.7% say they have not experienced ageism at all. “Ageism is an ever-present form of discrimination that workplaces can no longer afford to ignore. It is impacting women-identifying professionals across countries, organizations, industries, and sectors. And, the data reflects that there is no age or stage in a woman’s career where she’s immune to it”. 

Only 24% of the 174 top editors across 240 major online and offline news outlets are women despite that, on average, 40% of journalists are women. In 2023, this figure was 22% across the same markets, a survey by Reuters Institute shows. Among 33 new top editors appointed this year and last, 24% are women.

17% of international patents are held by women while men have 83% according to UN data. With the trends today, gender parity in international patenting will take until 2061, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) says. 

Half of women say their stress levels have increased since last year, and despite some progress, they are still not receiving adequate mental health support in the workplace, consultancy Deloitte’s annual survey Women at Work shows. Lack of flexible working hours is among the top reasons women have changed jobs over the past year (15%), with the same number also citing poor work/life balance. 

92 women journalists are behind bars, some for decades, others awaiting potential death sentences. 57 women journalists have been either detained, arrested, or imprisoned since the start of this year, a report from non-profit organisation Women in Journalism shows. “Our data provides a snapshot of the ongoing challenges faced by women in the media who are targeted for their journalistic endeavours.”

Gender parity will take another 134 years to reach. Underrepresentation of women in sectors with higher paying jobs, including technology and infrastructure, is one of the reasons for the gender pay gap. In 2024, women made up 28.2% of the STEM workforce, but the picture is improving for AI Engineering talent, World Economic Forum says in a report. 

The hiring of women into leadership roles continues to decline but GenAI presents an opportunity to help close the gender gap. Women are pushing forward with their own technical upskilling. Since 2016, the share of female AI talent and the concentration of women working in AI engineering has grown significantly, argues Sue Duke, head of global public policy at Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, in a blog post for World Economic Forum. 

There are fewer women having leading roles in top films! Last year fewer girls and women had leading roles compared to 2022. The figure plummeted to 30%, on par with 2010 and a 14 percentage point decline from the year prior, according to a study by the US-based Inclusion Initiative at Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The findings for all speaking characters show that little has changed for girls/women on screen in more than a decade and a half. 

Femtech startups – companies focusing on women’s health products and services – are collectively on course to raise a record amount of venture capital this year. “Investor interest in the sector has steadily grown in recent years as recognition expands for women’s healthcare needs”, according to US-based financial data firm PitchBook.

The European Parliament says it stands for gender equality. However, the EU elections in June did not improve the Parliament’s gender equality but made it slightly worse. The share of women elected as MEPs at the European elections in June 2024 was 38.5%, down from 39.8% just before the elections, the Parliament’s data shows.

There is a growing interest in women’s sports as investment opportunities! Sports have become a highly sought after asset class for private equity firms, and the Paris Olympics—the first to feature an equal number of male and female athletes—placed a spotlight on women’s sports as investment opportunities, financial data firm PitchBook says in a report.

Close to 50% of gamers worldwide are women but the business is dominated by men! More than three billion people worldwide play digital games and 46% of them are women. Despite this diverse community of gamers, their reflection on screen is significantly lacking, US-based Geena Davis Institute on gender in media says. The institute has now published The GDI Playbook with ideas on how to get a better gender balance in gaming business.

YouTube and Facebook are the most-widely used online platforms, according to a US fact sheet by Pew Research Center. On Facebook, the majority are women, 78% versus 61% men, while the gender balance on YouTube is a bit better but with a majority for men, 87% versus 83% for women. 

Women in the public eye, including journalists, those in politics and women human rights defenders are often targets of deliberate acts of violence, both online and offline, a new UN-report says. The report from the  UN Office on Drugs and Crime and UN Women, was released on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. 

Artificial intelligence poses new risks in terms of cyberviolence against women. Women are the primary targets of deep-fakes, particularly of ‘nudification’. More than 90 % of all deep-fake videos online are pornographic in nature and their victims are almost exclusively women – often cultural, media and political personalities, says an EU briefing for the European parliament’s annual Gender Equality Week.