simboli di genere

B Woman: inclusivity to overcome gender gap!

We often hear about “gender gap in STEM disciplines,” and numerous surveys and studies are carried out every year. BinHexS women (I include myself, the writer, in the discussion because I am also a woman) can, in our own small way, confirm this: the IT sector is mainly characterized by the presence of men, but something is changing; we can prove it.

Until a few years ago, in fact, women in our company could be counted on the fingers of one hand, while today we are almost a third of the total workforce, and recently a couple of new female resources have joined the purely technical (and totally male until 2023) teams. And there are plans to grow in this regard!

Today we give the word to one of them, Ilaria Castellani, who very recently joined the retail team.


Verdiana (Interviewer): What is your typical day at BinHexS and what are the main challenges you are facing?

Ilaria: “I’ll preface this by saying that I joined the company two months ago as an IT Service Desk Retail Technician, in a new role, and the main challenge is learning the many things there are to understand and know in order to work at my best on a day-to-day basis, and it’s very stimulating. The colleagues are very helpful. What I basically do is to give support on hardware and software issues via phone and remotely to the various users in the Client’s stores. It goes from more immediate support to backend-related activities.”

V: Are there any goals you set for yourself to achieve at the working level?

I: “At the professional level, in the short term, I aim to get to a level of knowledge and technical skills equal to my more skilled colleagues, I’m talking about those who came out of IT technical institutes, so they have studied the subject. In the long term, I would like to see more activities and maybe I would like to take on the role of coordinator or focus on another department, for example, project management fascinates me.”

V: What are your greatest passions instead?

I: “I am a person who ranges a lot, although from the work I do it might not seem so: I am passionate about most of the arts, such as drawing, painting and sculpture, I have tried various techniques. I also really enjoy writing poetry and reading it, it allows me to express my emotions. I also like music a lot because it relaxes me, and I really love photography, which accompanies me when I travel. Another activity I am passionate about is hiking in the mountains, my mom is originally from Trentino, so since I was a child I have been taking long walks.”

V: Let’s come to the topic of women’s role…how do you perceive gender equality in Italy and, from your point of view, what should be done to achieve it?

I: “What I would like is a more egalitarian role for women, that is equal rights, equal possibilities and equal recognition in comparison with the male gender. In Italy the situation has improved a lot compared to a few decades ago, however, compared to other countries as well, there is still a long way to go. On the corporate level, however, I see that there is an intention to increase the number of female resources and that there is an awareness regarding the numerical inferiority of female staff; for example, if I think about BinHexS, my department consists of practically only men, but there is a willingness to integrate new female resources. I am of the view that equality will only be achieved with meritocracy and access to education without gender discrimination or bias. This can be achieved by working on both the education of the younger generation and older people, showing hard data and analysis to support it, not ’emotional information’.”

I: “What I would like to add is that to me, even before being a woman or a man, it is important to remember that we are people, that we have another human being in front of us, and therefore deserving of respect and recognition; everything else comes later and helps to define then identity and personal facets. What we certainly need to do is to continue the equality debate by including everyone, thus also listening to what men and other gender identities have to say; excluding groups of people from the debate could bring more harm than good. Feminism, despite its name, must be inclusive, always remembering the paradox of tolerance: being intolerant of intolerance.”


We invite you to the next interview, coming out tomorrow on all our channels, for new stories of women in business and IT.