From online journalism and education to programmers’ community: the stories of women from Moldova who are studying IT
They were attracted by difficult things that require perseverance in order to become integral and clear. Or they wanted to leave the teaching job to learn the programming language which is at the core of digital apps. This way or another, their main motivation was to study the IT and become part of the programmers’ community.Date:
These are the stories of some of those 1,000 women and girls from Moldova of all ages who participate in a National IT Training Program, implemented by the Moldovan Association of Information and Communications Technology Companies, with the support of UN Women (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women) and funded by Sweden, under ‘Empowering Women with ICT Skills’ Project.
“I understood that I want to solve puzzles
and to enjoy the results...”
For many years, Irina Luca has been at the center of events, she remotely supervised live broadcasts from the scene where the action was happening to ensure the comprehensiveness of the news delivered to her readers. She managed the newsroom of one of the most read media portals in the country, and was implicitly attracted by the digital world, ensuring that the technical part of the website wouldn’t play a low-down trick in the most important moments.
Irina Luca, participant: “I was doing online journalism for many years, and most likely it was the first step to the IT realm which I really wanted to discover. For instance, I could explain details about HTML, the difference between front-end and back-end and so on. But I came to a moment when I realized that I no longer want to do monotonous things, but to solve puzzles and enjoy the results. In fact, I was always attracted by the digital world, by the technology, I was curious to learn how this system works. IT is a surprising, action-packed field which captivates you and conquers you extremely easily.”
Armed with motivation and knowledge in IT, Luca decided to retrain and changed the words and sentences correctly chosen for the elegant syntax of programming languages.
Irina Luca, participant: “The training program was a challenge for me. I decided to go to these courses the day when I made a news on this topic and I said, “Why not?”. This educational game helped me to understand that in fact IT isn’t so complicated. In order to succeed, you must want to, enjoy and be all set to learn new things every day. Currently, IT is present in all spheres of activity and to work in IT means to make ongoing progress. It’s a profession allowing you to work anywhere – in the office or remotely. Furthermore, currently women can show their creativity and can have successful careers in this realm’.
Read more on UN Women's website for Moldova.