At the WomenTech Network, we’re fortunate to have a wonderful, global community of ambassadors who help us spread the word about our work and especially our upcoming WomenTech Global Conference 2020. We would like you to meet these wonderful people as well; therefore, we’re going to be introducing you to some of our most active members.

Today, get to know Pedro Ferreira:

Pedro Ferreira is a Serial Entrepreneur, who is passionate about entrepreneurship, innovation, exponential technologies and ways to impact the world positively. He’s originally from Portugal but has been based in Germany for the past ten years. Pedro studied Management and Marketing and worked in cities such as Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, or Frankfurt, always with startups and scale-ups. Versed in multicultural teams and multidisciplinary project coordination has influenced him to become gender equality, inclusion, and diversity advocate and to get involved with WomenTechNetwork.

Diversity is one of the biggest challenges facing the tech industry. Addressing the gig-economy issues. On the project I work right now indeed, we want to enable society to move from gig-economy to passions-economy, and we believe this could have a tremendous impact on people’s lives and the way the tech industry works.

In Pedro’s Own Words:

• What can companies do to increase the number of women in technology? 

In my view, and I don’t want to be impolite here, there are plenty of programs, platforms, and great role-models, but the key to all of these being more efficient and exponential is, unfortunately, an element called MEN. Men should be called-out and reminded that they have a choice. 

Men can change and become part of the solution, or they automatically remain part, and indeed the main source, of the problem.

• How can men help make the tech sector a better place for women?

I don't have the secret Holy Grail, but I can tell you the small steps I do and encourage my Male Friends to do, including, advocate for fair workplace policies, highlighting female success and female role models, be a mentor, and yes: taking parental leaves and share the familiar responsibilities and duties. 

I guess its a matter of fighting inequalities and admitting that Men are not entitled to being Privileged.

• What is the role of educators and parents?

As a father of 2 sons and 2 daughters, I believe it's our role as parents and educators to seed the values and mindsets, even when they go against society's status quo. We lead by example and patriarchy is something that drives us crazy. Even in modern societies, even in highly educated circles, deep down it's still there, and we keep finding examples of different biases, including gender. Our role is to try to make our children understand the errors and ways to correct such issues. 

I would do my best so that my sons don't patronize and that my daughters don't accept it either.