WIT comes of Age: The Successful Story of the Women in Information Technology Workshop

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Abstract
Having more women in Computing, Information Technology, and Hard Sciences is a pressing matter that has been around for at least three decades. This article presents a success story about WIT (Women in Information Technology), an event part of the CSBC (Brazilian Computer Society Congress). It was created 18 years ago as an open space to discuss gender equity issues in Computing and is currently organized by Programa Meninas Digitais – PMD (Digital Girls Program). In this article, we present the impact of WIT within the Brazilian Computing community. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out over data recorded throughout this period. The results show WIT’s growing number of participants, citations to published papers, and submissions over the years prove its success. So, WIT was born as an embryo, then grew, matured, and created a personality. Today, upon reaching adulthood, it inspires thousands of women to begin working in computing or to thrive in it. WIT has also shown men that society benefits when diversity and respect exist for all minorities, especially women in Computing.

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