Motivating Girls to Work in Culture, Creative and ICT Industries

The measure is implemented through involvement in international initiatives aimed at empowering girls to overcome gender stereotypes in terms of career choice and their increased participation in various fields such as the creative sector, music industry, and information and communications technology. - The campaign “Inspiring Girls Serbia” is part of the global campaign “Inspiring Girls,” coordinated by the international organization Inspiring Girls International and implemented together with local partners in each country. Serbia’s partner is the CRTA organization from Belgrade, and the campaign was supported by the Coordination Body for Gender Equality in 2017. The campaign aims to combat gender bias and motivate girls, ages 10 to 15, to pursue their passions as a career path in the future. The project entails connecting girls with successful women in a number of fields, including culture, media, sports, physics, science, business, marketing, communication, music, literature... to show them the diverse range of available professions. The girls get to meet a variety of professionals through panels and conversations across Serbia. The campaign is taking place in 13 countries around the world: Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Columbia, Honduras, Italy, Singapore, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, Mexico, Panama, and Peru. - The international initiative Girls in ICT Day was created to introduce girls and young women to information and communications technology, to encourage them to pursue education in this field, as well as to stimulate the application of new technologies in other fields such as cultural industries and the creative sector. The activity is held every fourth Thursday in April at the initiative of the Republic of Serbia and as part of the Global Women's ICT Network, which was founded under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). In Serbia, Girls in ICT Day was marked in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. It was organized and supported by the Coordination Body for Gender Equality, the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, as well as various institutions, companies, and non-governmental organizations. - The recurring annual camp "Rock Camp for Girls" began in 2017 as a non-profit program for girls who want to learn the basics of playing guitar, bass guitar, drums, or keyboard piano. Every year, the program is held in a different city for girls ages 11 to 14. For seven days, they are accompanied by mentors, young female musicians who are constantly working with them and helping them form their band, with which the girls perform in concert on the last day of the camp. The project’s goals are to promote new, interesting, and high-quality cultural and creative content, educating girls about the different alternatives available to them, encouraging them to pursue their musical interests, which they often don’t have many opportunities to do, overcoming the issue of female musicians and songwriters being underrepresented in the rock and alternative music scenes. The Rock Camp for Girls is organized by OPA, a youth organization dedicated to the promotion of activism, as part of the FEMIX program for the affirmation of women’s creative potentials. In 2017, the Ministry of Youth and Sports supported the project with the program “Youth Rules,” and since 2018 the Ministry of Culture and Information has been supporting it with a public call for contemporary creative acts.