Upskilling women for the digital economy

A GLOBAL-NOT-FOR-PROFIT organization focused on creating fairer opportunity pools for women in the accelerating data economy, conducted a Southeast Asia consumer survey to gather workforce insights on learning pathways.

In collaboration with Milieu Insight, She Loves Data survey results showed that 87 percent of women in the region are interested in taking courses to develop their professional skills. 44 percent of employees in Southeast Asia and more than half (57 percent) in Indonesia intend to make a career switch within the next 5 years.

Singapore female employees trailed behind the region average in terms of familiarity with digital marketing (5 percent vs 16 percent indicated “very familiar”).

Entrepreneurship motivations were strongest among women ages 35 years and above in Thailand (48 percent) and the Philippines (43 percent) where almost half sought to upskill as they had plans to set up their own businesses.

Latest UN data show that the world is critically off track to reach gender equality by 2030.

With UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) underscoring the empowerment of women as an important development objective, SLD aims to address the gender gap by creating equal opportunities for women in their career development.

IT/ Computing/ Programming (33 percent) emerges as one of the top three professional courses that women in Southeast Asia are interested in taking.

Data and digital analytics courses are also one of the top courses sought after by Singaporean women (38 percent). Nearly 8 in 10 of the region’s female employees prefer professional courses to be conducted online.

“As businesses across all industries embrace digital transformation, corporations and employers struggle to fill roles across all digital skills domains, “said Jana Marle-Zizkova, co-founder and volunteering chief executive at She Loves Data. “We hope to narrow the digital competence gap with the new SLDxDigital training so women get their fair share of digital economy opportunities.”

Starting March 2023, She Loves Data will launch its bespoke pilot digital skills training program SLDxDigital to provide reskilling pathways that will equip women with transferable skills in areas of Digital Innovation, Digital Analytics and Data-driven Digital Marketing.

SLDxDigital is a certification training program spread over 3 modules, each module lasting 4 weeks. Classes will be delivered virtually on Saturdays to ensure career women could also participate.

She Loves Data encourages women who are interested in upskilling and organizations who are keen to partner.