It's time for Dev's annual #SheCoded-campaign, and I wrote my piece about my experiences from my career, and about bias. 

https://dev.to/eevajonnapanula/nevertheless-eevis-still-codes-53o0

As the only female in my company, I started a conversation about gender in the workplace and the larger implications of potential unconscious gender bias. 
 I suggested an open dialogue where we discuss how we can not only set a standard but also put actionable steps in place for implementing more diversity, equity, and inclusion into our company at this early stage. 
I was very nervous to have this conversation, and I am proud to be part of a team who made me feel I have an equal voice. 
We are taking active steps to learn about DEI from perspectives we don’t have in order to implement practices at as foundational a level as possible as we grow. 

MotherBoard Charter

Joined the MotherBoard Charter as a founding signatory to support women and mothers in tech.

This was the pinnacle of the "Growth Project" I started in June 2020 to build and grow an inclusive and diverse team. As of September 2021, I have sustainably grown the team 5x, and built a team that representative of genders, ethnicities, abilities, age and social diversity.

“At CareDocs, we pride ourselves in having created an open and fair culture where inclusion, diversity and equality are very important to us. We are delighted to be a MotherBoard signatory, we will continue with our efforts to improve, support, and promote a fair, inclusive and a flexible working environment for women and mothers both within our organisation and beyond. “

 
Highlights:

• Championed Inclusion, Diversity, Equality and Equity.
• Gender-Neutral Job Adverts
• Gender-Diverse Interview Panel
• Equal Pay
• Promoted Women \ Mothers to Senior Positions
• Established Flexible Working Hours
  • We all have a family to look after (including pets), hospital and GP appointments to go to, nativity plays to attend, run to the shop for milk and bread and many other actives and errands that we cannot always plan ahead of time.
• Established Flexible Working Locations
  • Work From Home (WFH), Work From Office (WFO), Work From Anywhere (WFA) enabling us to go beyond remote to a distributed workforce.
• Training and Awareness
  • Introduced Brown Bag Sessions, Training Days, and Awareness Days (Cultural, Religious, Political, etc).
  • Introduced Apprenticeships 
  • Introduced Learning Platforms
  • Introduced Personal and Professional Development Plans

Objectives:

1. Champion part-time and flexible working across all levels of seniority, enabling the advancement of women’s careers in technology and data-led roles.

Maintain flexible working across all positions for everyone. Currently, we facilitate flexible hours, flexible work locations (we are remote and distributed), and accommodate our workforce when necessary, by allowing individuals time to attend to personal or family matters. We allow all employees time off work to attend medical and healthcare appointments and ensure that there is a work life balance within the organisation.

2. Increase the % of working mothers holding leadership or board-level positions.

Promote, encourage, and ensure both mothers and women, in general, can progress and hold senior and board-level roles.

3. Educate organisations on how they can support mothers throughout their careers.

Continue with the efforts to educate and promote an open fair culture where career breaks for mothers and mothers to-be are the norm to provide assurance and support for the candidates before and after the transition.

4. Improve maternity and return to work policies.
Recruit mothers and women returning to work or changing careers into roles while providing training and continuous professional development to support career progression.

Pitched a proposal to revamp all forms within the client - this included:

• Open fields for pronouns
• Optional fields for sexual orientation and gender.
• Optional fields for minorities

Based some of the fields on OIT info :) 

I've always been a big fan of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and take to heart her quote "Fight for the things that you care about in a way that will lead others to join you" so I wrote something titled RBG, Equality And Gender Neutrality.

In her continuing mission to blaze a trail for equality, RBG never veered from a fight against injustice. It didn’t matter who was being discriminated against, the fight for justice always came first.

We are all aware that silence normalises oppression and bias, and so we should all be individuals devoted to the power of equity and resolve not to be silent in light of any form of prejudice, marginalisation, racism or sexism.

If you have the time and inclination, would love for you to have a read, to celebrate her and maybe provide some feedback on my call out to take up a Modernised RBG Perspective for Advocacy beyond the binary.
Published Article: RBG, Equality and Gender Neutrality.

Together with more than 4.000 members of the ethical and cooperative bank, Banca Popolare Etica, I have attended the Extraordinary Assembly in Palermo. 

We voted for amendments in the bank statute that makes it the first statute in the banking system (in both Italy and Spain) to use gender-neutral language. 

We are very proud of it!