Google Celebrated International Women’s Day By Launching "Women Will"

Google celebrated International Women’s Day this year (March 8th) by hosting “Women Will” for India.

From the likes of Google Vice-President and President of Google.org to Union minister Smriti Irani, Tata Trusts’ chairman Ratan Tata, Google VP Jacqueline Fuller, and many more attended the online event. During the event, the company discussed some serious matters regarding women empowerment like gender equality, women's financial participation, female entrepreneurship. Through this cause, they want to encourage women's empowerment and help them to start their businesses. 

Sundar Pichai (chief executive officer) CEO of US-based Google 

announced the impact fund of $25 million for supporting 1 million women entrepreneurs from rural India. Google also granted $500,000 to NASSCOM so that it can target 100,000 women agricultural workers and provide them with digital and financial literacy skills. It will cover the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh. Registration will go on till April 10. Winners will win mentorships from Googlers, Ad grants, and additional support. 

On the program (Internet Saathi) for women, the tech giant also announced the conclusion along with Tata Trusts. Sundar Pichai said in a statement “When women have equal access to opportunity, we all benefit from their perspectives, creativity, and their expertise, and this is true all over the world. Yet, when it comes to accessing opportunity, deep inequalities persist. Building on the Internet Saathi program success, we’re making a new commitment to help 1 million women in rural villages in India to become entrepreneurs through business tutorials, tools, and mentorship.”  

In February 2019, Meena Sharma from Hisar in Haryana and her husband were injured in a bike accident. For Meena, the “Internet Saathi” program proved to be a savior during this hard-period of her life. She told indianexpress.com on a call “I’ve been associated with teeming for the last one year and a half. I started my business of selling fast food in the village after joining the program”. 

Meena set her own shop for fast food and learned how to use the internet however, she thanked the Google program. The 37-year-old lady learned so much from the program as she had never used the internet in her life previously. 

Google will enable keywords like “women-led, Women-led restaurants, women-led clothing” so that it will encourage women-oriented businesses to expand more.

In July (2020) after the initiatives, Sindar Pichai announced that in India Google will invest a great $10 billion through the Google for India Digitization Fund. Over the fund, Google has invested in the likes of (Reliance Jio), run by Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani. 

Google introduced tools to the other modules for learning business basics, that complement the business or digital safety and cybersecurity funds. 

Tutorials on a topic like “be an income earner” will showcase educational videos that will be helpful for shops like (tuition center, tailoring, xerox shop, beauty parlor, and Kirana shop).

In these six years, 30M women in India are benefited from the training provided by 80,000 Internet Saathi or companions. 

Author: Prerna Sharma

Editor: Shrestha Adhikari

FOLLOW US ON-FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, TWITTER 

IF YOU LIKE OUR CONTENT THEN DO COMMENT & SHARE