Antonia Forster
Antonia has a Masters degree in Zoology. She is a keynote speaker and self-taught programmer, working in the field of AR, VR, and haptics. She travels worldwide, speaking on inclusion and diversity in the workforce. She is a passionate advocate for Women in STEM, a TEDx speaker and mentor, she has been shortlisted for Nature's John Maddox Prize for her work as an LGBTQ+ speaker and activist. She is a frequent speaker at a.o. London Science Museum, the Royal Society, Kew Gardens, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Grant Museum of Zoology, BBC Radio and more.
- Recording: Yes
- Language: English
- Duration: 45 min / 15 min
Closing the Gender Gap in Tech
It is no secret that technology is having a diversity crisis. Despite initiatives to diversify, technology is still perceived as a predominantly white, male, middle-class industry. But this wasn't always the case - in 1943, computing was dominated by women. What happened? Join Antonia Forster, XR Technical Specialist, for a data-driven exploration of the gender gap:- how it affects your bottom line, how AI and machine-learning reinforce bias, and how we can employ evidence-based strategies to combat it.
During the expert session, Antonia Forster engages the audience through a Q&A session, live demonstrations using the Mentimeter app for interactive exercises, and storytelling. She discusses addressing gender gaps in various industries and creating inclusive workplaces, covering topics like understanding the problem, identifying mechanisms causing bias, exploring solutions, and building diverse teams. The Mentimeter app allows participants to share opinions on related questions, fostering active participation. Antonia also emphasizes the importance of diversity and inclusion in companies, discussing her personal experiences and sharing examples of successful initiatives.
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Recognizing Bias and Inequality in the Workplace: Understanding the current state of the gender gap and mechanisms that perpetuate bias and inequality is essential for creating inclusive workplaces.
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Promoting Equitable Representation: Shifting focus from exclusive qualifications to diverse backgrounds and demographics will help include individuals from various underrepresented groups, leading to equitable representation across teams.
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Inspiring Change through Role Models and Policies: Companies like Harvey Mudd College and Patagonia have successfully increased female representation by rebranding and implementing effective gender-inclusive policies. Encouraging diversity in recruitment and retention, as well as role modelling representation from leaders, can make a significant impact on closing the gender gap.
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In this expert session, Antonia Forster explores the topic of addressing the gender gap and fostering inclusive workplaces. She begins by sharing a thought-provoking anecdote about two journalists, Marty and Nicole, who faced disparate treatment based on their genders, shedding light on one of many challenges women and marginalized individuals confront in professional settings.
Antonia delves deeper into the root causes of biases that perpetuate inequality, focusing her advocacy efforts on advancing gender equity for transgender, queer, neurodivergent, and gender non-conforming individuals. She shares her own journey of persevering in the tech industry despite encountering discrimination and how she's learned to navigate these challenges.
The expert session encompasses four primary themes: recognizing the issue at hand (the existing gender gap), identifying underlying mechanisms causing bias and inequality, proposing solutions for creating inclusive workplaces, and offering practical strategies to maintain a diverse and welcoming environment. Throughout her talk, Antonia employs interactive elements using the Mentimeter app, enabling participants to contribute their insights on topics related to the session's theme.
Antonia underlines the significance of diversity and inclusion within companies, emphasizing that parents and schools significantly influence individuals' perceptions of their capabilities. However, businesses can make a difference by ensuring diverse representation across all departments. Creating an inclusive team may present challenges for organizations without a diverse workforce initially.
Antonia discusses her personal experiences as a queer woman in Tech and the expectations placed upon her to serve representational roles, which often detract from her engineering focus. She advocates for businesses to reconsider their recruitment and retention strategies by prioritizing skills over specific qualifications, enabling a more inclusive workforce.
Antonia cites instances of institutions that have effectively increased female representation, such as Harvey Mudd College's revamp of computer science courses. She also acknowledges companies like Patagonia for their gender-inclusive policies and practices.
According to Antonia, closing the gender pay gap varies across industries and specific companies within each sector. Nordic countries like Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland are recognized for their progress but rely heavily on social policies that support childcare and workplace benefits.
To address underrepresented minorities such as CIS transgender individuals, Antonia suggests that representation within a population should be reflected in companies, ensuring equitable representation across all roles. She encourages further exploration of industry-specific research for comprehensive analyses on gender and ethnicity disparities.
Antonia leaves participants with a call-to-action, encouraging them to make small strides towards promoting equity within their organizations and continuing their learning journey to implement change.
"When I came out of the closet I was blackmailed, threatened, even bribed. But of all the shocking words that were said to me, three stood out in particular - 'It's not natural'." Antonia Forster, a bisexual, non-monogamous biologist, challenges the notion that certain behaviors are unnatural, often used to justify bigotry against LGBT and non-traditional individuals. Join her in this inspiring session to explore what "natural" means, whether animals can be gay, and if there are always two sexes, revealing the animal kingdom in a whole new light.
AI has the power to shape our world, and is increasingly becoming part of our daily lives - but what happens when it inherits society’s biases? This talk dives into the hidden bias and stereotyping in AI, from hiring algorithms to facial recognition systems. We’ll learn how training data fuels these problems, and how AI can reinforce prejudiced beliefs in users, including real-world examples from tech giants like Amazon and LinkedIn. But it’s not all bad news - there are ways to fix it. Get ready for eye-opening examples, shocking data, and real solutions to make AI fairer for all.
- Thank you for an inspiring session.
- Great speaker. Really grabs your attention.
- Just awesome and I also love you talked about "I don't see color”.
- Really great session from Antonia! It really put things into perspective for me!
- Very clear, instructive and constructive, with some informative anecdotal examples. Highly recommended for people wishing to raise their awareness, with some good pointers on how to improve.
- It was very inspirational. Easy to grasp and to understand. Loved the use of mentometer in the session. Very good speaker!It was really nice, Antonia is excellent. Her messages are brought clearly, not forceful and allow the listener to take their own takeaways.
- The session was a lot more engaging than I anticipated and I'm very glad I gave it my full attention. It would be great to make these sessions compulsory for senior leadership as they can have a direct impact on results but their attendance was lacking.
- The session has been extremely interesting and it got my attention all the time. Hopefully, the world can change and forget about all the biases that are present today. Thank you, Antonia, for being so inspirational.
- It was excellent! Loved it.
- I loved the use of visuals, examples and statistics (I am Dyslexic, it helps a lot). Speaker was great, very clear and kept it engaging start to finish. Also I found the part about diverse teams performing better especially relatable.
- It was a very nice session. Really interesting. Antonia really did her homework. My compliments for that.
- As a side comment: there were 56 colleagues logged in, but about 70 attended the webinar onsite.
- Fantastic highlighted lecture that I hope that all our employees can learn from it.