In the status quo, girls are often told that their dreams are unreachable and unrealistic. These words are reinforced by a lack of support and opportunities from society that are necessary to fulfill their goals. Indeed, insufficient support is reflected in the numbers that we see, year after year. In finance, women only made up 30% of entry-level positions in 2022. In STEM, women made up 27% of the workforce in 2019.
The disparities don’t end there. Even amongst women, there are stark divides that hinder demographics such as people of color, those of LGBTQIA+, and lower socio-economic classes. Growing up in these families means that girls often do not have adequate connections and opportunities to be mentored or work alongside powerful leaders in the field they wish to enter. To those who often have no idea what their preferred jobs look like, guidance can be crucial to helping them follow the necessary steps leading to success.
To us, one thing remains clear: we need to develop a far-reaching, accessible net for women to step into the careers they deserve.
Introducing Sis-ciety, an online website-forum tasked with the goal to break these barriers for young women and minorities in the community, where aspiring students can learn from first-hand experiences of women in the workforce and potentially discover new fields they may wish to enter. Free to sign up, Sis-ciety is accessible for any student around the world, offering one-on-one mentorship and guidance with someone in your preferred field, located near your community.
Once a student is paired with their mentor, they are free to network, inquire about the job, discuss relevant steps helping prepare them for the career, and even potentially receive internships and opportunities. Additionally, students can also refer to weekly posts about success stories about women who are leaders in their respective fields and exclusive behind the scenes interview.
Although Sis-ciety may resemble social media platforms such as LinkedIn, we believe that a platform that offers mentorship both one-on-one and through blogs is unprecedented. Moreover, we believe that unlike many other social media platforms, we cultivate a culture of understanding and empathy, where women and girls are more likely to feel safe sharing their experiences.
So, how did we build our product?
As we wanted to build a website, we first used HTML to create a broad framework for different pages and links on our site. Then, we used CSS to style the different elements on each page.
Throughout our project, we encountered some challenges related to the development of the idea; for us we had many ideas in the beginning and had a hard time narrowing it down to a single solution. As we started coding, we encountered some basic syntax problems that we solved using online resources.
We have four steps for improvement.
Firstly, finishing our current product so that it contains the most basic features like registration forms, chat rooms, and general forum areas.
Secondly, using AI to quickly filter through descriptions of professionals and finding the most suitable fit between mentors and mentees. Moreover, we would like to use AI to moderate our public forums and chats to uphold anti-bullying and protection policies for all users.
Thirdly, we would like to improve the accessibility on our website. This would be realized through translation services that allow women and girls in foreign countries to engage on our platform. Furthermore, we hope to build smaller online communities on our website for certain professions. For example, there could be a small subset of women in healthcare in the GTA.
Lastly, our final step would be to promote our product to women and girls around the world, starting with our local community in the GTA.
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