The UN’s 2030 agenda has highlighted the special challenge the world faces today in achieving women's empowerment and gender equality, making it its fifth goal. This issue cuts across all economic sectors, but in the field of science, technology, and innovation, it is a priority.
The data speaks for itself. According to the 2021 Colombia TECH Report, 96% of startups in the country are founded by men, and only 4% by women.
Similarly, the UNESCO Institute of Statistics calculates that the global average for female researchers is 29.3%, and only 3% of Nobel Prizes in science have been awarded to women. Furthermore, in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), only 35% of those studying university and technical programs are women.
Therefore, addressing this issue is no longer a choice but an obligation. We need to take swift action to close the gender gap and ensure equal access for women to the social, political, and economic dynamics that technology and innovation provide. All institutions—public, private, or citizen-led—formal or informal—must recognize this and take action.
This has been one of our main commitments at Ruta N, and we aim to achieve this not only through support for gender-focused tech communities but also through efforts to gather data, implement affirmative actions, question ourselves, and, in many cases, make ourselves uncomfortable. This is the only way to generate a chain reaction that will place Medellín in a new position of equity.
This text was originally published in the March 14 edition of ADN newspaper.
