2 Years with Generation Girl from Every Perspective
By: Hanifa Dean
Tags: Women in STEM, Generation Girl, Non Profit Organization, STEM, Technology

Context:

My brother (huge shoutout to him) sends me this link mistakenly generationgirl.com that led me to a Barbie website and was immediately disinterested by it. Then he corrected the link and added this poster asking if I’d like to join this with him because he finds it interesting. I was still in high school and I had never really had any experience in joining seminars or talks like these. There was never a seminar that I’d voluntarily go to, it’ll usually be for some school event. Also, back then, I didn’t think that seminars could be a place that could provide so many valuable insights. I underestimated the usefulness of a seminar or talkshow.

To add, I was never really actively searching about current issues back then let alone about the gender gap issue in STEM, because all I cared about then were my IB exams🥴. So since I was free that day, I thought why not? To join this open-to-public and free seminar, all I had to do was submit a question in relation to women in STEM. And so I did. Little did I know, I would be involved in the Gen G community for the next 2 years ever since!

At the end of the sharing session by the panelists, the moderator selected 3 questions from the registration form to be directed to the panelists. I was super surprised to see my name show up and my question getting asked.

What I Learned:

Her answer and the talk in general genuinely triggered my realization that there is an issue currently that women are facing in the tech industry. Even I myself, felt it at a much smaller scale back in school where the number of girls even participating in STEM subjects are much less than boys.

Some of her answers to my question:

“To practice coding, what’s important is to just start first! (#MulaiAjaDulu)…then when you face a hard programming problem, instead of being stressed, be excited, be ambitious, in Tokopedia, we have a saying to get things done which goes: make it happen, make it better…the greater the challenge, the more satisfaction there is when you finish it. To overcome the stereotype, it starts with each one of us being really good at it so that we can change the perception of females in tech. And of course, supporting each other too and become good role models and inspiration for the next generation”

I am so glad I decided to join this with my brother 😊 Otherwise, I would have missed out on the many opportunities that this one exposure to Gen G would have led me to. Perhaps, I wouldn’t even know Gen G existed in the first place! At the time, they had around 2000+ Instagram followers already.

side note: I was also super happy that my question got answered because I got some goodies from Tokopedia that included cookies🥰

See if you can spot my cameo in Gen G’s first youtube channel video for this event. (Hint 👀: go to 0:48 and 0:53)

My Main Takeaways: Trying and exploring new opportunities never hurts, you can always learn something from it. There’s still a lack of female representation in the STEM industry

Summer Club Rookie (Jul 2019)

This was the peak dive to the Gen G community. It was Gen G’s first ever Summer Club event and their second holiday club. Undoubtedly, this experience is up there in the list of my “post-high school graduation and pre-university” summer highlight!