General Assembly works to close workplace gender gap

 April 15, 2019

Global education company and International Women’s Day supporter, General Assembly (GA), hosted special events worldwide to mark the important topic of gender equality.

A total of 14 Women In Industry events took place at locations including Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Denver, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Singapore, Sydney and Washington.

Overcoming the female “confidence gap”

The events aimed to help forge a #BalanceForBetter and featured notable female business leaders who debated how women can help bridge the gender gap which still exists in many workplaces.

For example, the New York event brought together female leaders from Disney Streaming, Dow Jones, Nike and Uber to discuss improving gender diversity in the workplace.

During their discussion, the leaders suggested that more women should have the confidence to put themselves forward for roles that they might not initially have thought they were qualified for.

The leaders at the event noted that many women miss out on opportunities because they meet some of the criteria in the job advertisement but not all of it. Rather than take a risk and apply, a lack of confidence holds them back.

Explaining this observation further, Head of General Assembly's Enterprise Media practice, Ali Levitan, added: "Men apply for jobs when they meet 60 per cent of the qualifications, where women apply when they meet 100 per cent."

She believes that women should stop discounting themselves based on qualifications, as they could miss out on a role they are suitable for with on-the-job training.

The panellists also recommended that hiring managers should ask the same questions of every job applicant. By standardizing all interview questions, the potential for bias may be eliminated.

The event further recommended women keep their LinkedIn profiles up-to-date as a great deal of “passive recruitment” occurs. Another suggestion was to mentor the next generation of women, and to involve men in the gender diversity discussion – by including everyone in the conversation, more progress can be made.

A special scholarship empowering women in tech

In addition to running the events, General Assembly has opened applications for an exciting scholarship, which offers women interested in STEM a significant financial contribution towards GA course funding.

The scholarship, dubbed See Her Excel, offers $1,500 USD towards tuition fees on a full-time General Assembly course – namely the Software Engineering Immersive and Data Science Immersive courses.

Women interested in technology who meet the required criteria can apply in order to gain expert-led training in coding, data, design, digital marketing and much more.

To be eligible to apply, candidates must be age 18 or older; self-identify as a woman, transgender, gender-queer or non-binary person; have a current income of less than $40,000; and have been admitted onto a full-time General Assembly course.

Earn your place in history as a General Assembly scholar

The aim of See Her Excel is to reverse the decline in the number of women working in STEM professions.

General Assembly is also reminding scholarship applicants that many women have excelled in STEM throughout history – including computer programmer Ada Lovelace, inventor Grace Hopper and astronaut Mae Jemison - and GA hopes that its courses will help to inspire future generations.

General Assembly says: “Throughout history, women have played central roles in the advancement of STEM. Yet, the number of women in technical professions — particularly minority women — has steadily declined over the last few decades. GA has set out to help reverse that trend with See Her Excel.”

To find out more and apply, click here to see where the opportunity could take you.

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