Will the real Woman please stand up?

A video of a little girl reading out a paper stopped me in my tracks as I skimmed through my Facebook feed. And instinctively, I knew I had to watch it.

A part of Shell's new social media campaign that aims to redress the gender balance in the Engineering and Tech industries, the video features a voiceover of comments aimed at women that frame the issue of gender gap across these industries, through the lens of unconscious bias and micro-inequities.

That it's hard-hitting would be an understatement.  Being an Engineer myself, I never really saw the "gender gap" in Tech. Quite the contrary, we were a bunch of 150 odd girls (in my batch) waiting to get our degrees and make a mark for ourselves in the corporate world. And we sure did.

While some of my classmates went on to work with Tech MNCs right after placement, some changed their career path (including me).

But this post is not about me. Or my friends that made it. It's about those pipeline leaks - girls that drop off from probable high-paying Tech positions as they progress from school to college, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, and then at work. It's the unwritten, unsaid, quietly percolating stereotypical thinking that casually puts the 'only for boys' stamp on Tech jobs that's driving the diminishment of women’s representation in Engineering.

If you examine this issue closely, you will realize that it's not limited to Engineering and Tech alone. The stats on women in leadership doesn't paint a cheerful picture either. While progress is being made on all fronts to get the fairer sex a seat at the table, we are far from achieving gender parity, especially at the C-level.

If we wish to attain a sustainable, gender-balanced talent pool for the future, this has got to change. Starting NOW!

At UpsideLMS, we have been walking this talk since our inception. Below is our women power in all its strength personifying our beliefs.

So this #WomensDay let's vow to change the narrative. One woman/ girl at a time.

Happy International Women's Day!