Today in the office we are celebrating the International Day of The Girl. The theme of 2017’s October 11th celebration is “Girls’ Progress = Goals’ Progress: A Global Girl Data Movement.”

Plan International has released the findings of a new survey of Australian girls, which has shown that 98% of girls don’t think they’re treated equally to boys. The research reports that there is a there is a ‘dream gap’ between “what girls aspire to in early life and what they believe is realistic for them as they become young adults.”

Girls and women are particularly under-represented in STEAM fields – there are more men named Peter than there are women in the top 200 ASX companies. Enter new Booked Out Speaker Ally Watson, who founded the ‘Code Like A Girl’ initiative to combat the issue of gender diversity in tech. They hold coding events Australia-wide, for girls from age 6 – 18.

Ally has also just started visiting schools to share her story, as well as to encourage and empower girls to pursue a career in STEAM fields.

See what’s happening to celebrate the #DayOfTheGirl at DayOfTheGirl.org, which monitors the day’s events all over the world, and read more about Ally Watson here.