MANILA, Sept. 17 (PNA) — There is a big opportunity to close the gender gap in the coming years, especially in the fields of technology and innovation, a global banking executive said on Thursday during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Public-Private Dialogue on Women and the Economy, held at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City.
Citi’s Chief Client Experience, Digital and Marketing Officer, Heather Carroll Cox, said her company sponsored a documentary in May for a conference on women, held in San Francisco.
Citi is a leading global bank with about 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions.
The film, “Code: Debugging the Myth”, showed very startling statistics about the US workforce, she said, citing that according to the documentary, there will be a shortage of one million engineers in the US by year 2020.
Cox noted a decrease in the number of American women graduating from college and universities with degrees in computer science and engineering.
Less than 18 percent of women in the US graduate with computer science degrees, and less than 27 percent of them graduate with engineering degrees, she added.
“We have a huge opportunity to step in to this new digital world and to really step up the opportunity to help our women become equipped to work in the new world economy,” Cox said.
She further said that first to eighth grade boys and girls are equal in terms of performance in math and science, but four years later, in the 12th grade, boys are four times more likely to be placed in advanced computer science programs.
When they get to college, 57 percent of all college degrees in the US are issued to women every year, she added.
“The opportunity is profound to drive and be part of the innovation cycle but how do we make sure that we have the right talent to do it?” she said.
Cox also mentioned a report from the Mackenzie Global Institute, the “Power of Parity”, which shows how equality for women can generate USD 12 trillion in global growth by 2025.
“This is something that we should care about deeply. The opportunities impact our economies this way,” she said. (PNA)