Dilma: the international woman of Brazil

Carnival is upon us today and Brazil is almost entirely on holiday, unless you happen to be a bus driver who drew the Carnival shift, but how could IT Decisions fail to comment on International Women’s Day?

Exactly one hundred years ago today, more than a million women in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland attended rallies campaigning for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office, and for an end to discrimination. Since then, March the 8th each year has always been a day for women to campaign for their rights and to demonstrate their achievements.

Discrimination still exists. Perhaps it always will to a lesser degree. But IT Decisions believes that women involved in IT here in Brazil have two strong role models that offer some hope:

• Ada Lovelace developed the first algorithms designed to be processed by machine. She was the world’s first ever computer programmer. So the next time you guys claim to be better at coding than girls, just remember who got there first.
• Dilma Rousseff is possibly the most powerful woman in the world. Not sure of that? Do leaders such as Angela Merkel or Hillary Clinton really come close to the President of Brazil? The democratic leader of 200 million people in one of the most vibrant and fast-growing world economies – only this week leaping ahead of the UK and Italy in world economic rankings.

When Dilma became president, she asked mothers and fathers to look into the eyes of their daughters and to tell them, “yes, women can.”

Whatever your personal political allegiance, IT Decisions believes that the president is right in this regard. The next generation of young Brazilian women will grow up seeing female political and business leaders playing a part in their everyday life. The next wave of Brazilian leaders won’t be drawn from only 50% of the gene pool – our future leaders will be male or female without fear or favor.