The Girls’Day-Campaign is a very efficient measure aiming to increase young women’s interest in scientific and technical fields. Girls’Day is an open day for girls that takes place once a year in technical enterprises, enterprises with technical departments and technical training facilities, universities, and research centers. Girls’Day in Europe started in Germany in 2001 with by now more than 100.000 girls participating in Girls’Day in Germany every year. In the meantime in sixteen other European countries, Girls’Day or similar actions take place.

We kindly invite you to participate in the workshop. Key stakeholders from relevant areas are expected to participate, so it is an excellent chance to meet experts from relevant fields. The workshop addresses all activists interested in Girls’Day: 

• Those who already have experience in organizing a Girls’Day in their country.
• Those who are planning to organize a first Girls’Day.
• Those who want to apply the experiences of Girls’Day events to their own projects.

The workshop provides practical insight into the setting-up and into management, communication, and evaluation strategies of the Girls’Day in order to establish a sustainable and creative network being able to have long-term effects.

To illustrate how to set up a Girls’Day on a national and a regional level, the experiences of Girls’Day in Germany, the Netherlands, and in Poland will be specified and discussed in comparison to the processes in the other participant’s countries. Key issues are successful acquisition strategies: How to address and involve the different target groups (girls, companies, schools) in order to build up strong network structures? Which success factors and which barriers can be identified and dealt with? How to establish Girls’Day as a widely known and regularly applied tool for the vocational orientation of girls?

Girls’Day Germany has been evaluated since its beginnings. In the workshop, there will be presented findings of different aspects concerning the action day: How is it organized in different places? What feedback is given by different target groups (girls, schools, enterprises, and institutions)? What image does have technical and scientific jobs among the participating girls? And is there a sustainable influence of the project on the vocational orientation of girls?

The workshop aims to establish an exchange of experience on a European level to enable the participants to learn from each other and develop together with the Girls’Day as a flexible instrument that can be adapted to country-specific conditions and demands. It can also be discussed how to establish a European Girls’Day, involving as many countries as possible.

Workshop Organizers

Bianka Siwinska, Perspektywy Education Foundation, Poland
Christina Haaf, Competence Center Technology-Diversity-Equal Chances, Germany
Wenka Wentzel, Competence Center Technology-Diversity-Equal Chances, Germany

Photo credit: Kompetenzzentrum Technik-Diversity-Chancengleichheit / Bundeskanzleramt