On April 22nd we participated in a new instance of Techy x el día. As it has been doing for several years, Pyxis joined this CUTI initiative to show girls and young women all the opportunities that are open to them in the world of ICT. At an age when they are beginning to think about their future, it is important that they can look beyond the traditional, beyond what they see at first glance. To learn about experiences that seem far away in order to realize how close they really are and that dreaming of achieving them is more real than it seems. That is why conferences like these are fundamental: they show not only a possibility to build their professional future, but also a path to follow throughout their lives.

In this case, we did not open our doors alone. We had the collaboration of Elemental’s team to show together the opportunities that the world of technology offers to girls and young women. With the excuse of Techy x el día, together with Magela Fuzatti, Natalia Leguisamo and Fabiana Pedrini from Elemental, we asked ourselves a question: what is the place of women in space travel? From the specific cases in the first space flights, such as Margaret Hamilton and the Apollo missions, or Valentina Tereshkova and the first woman in space, to the unmanned missions of our days that set foot on Mars, women have always played a fundamental role in the development of space travel. Sometimes hidden, sometimes more visible. But they were always there.

With this in mind, we talked with girls and young people about the possibilities of making a space trip. What we should take, how to organize it, under what circumstances to do it. We thought about every detail about our flight to travel to Mars with our imagination, thinking about the ever-closer possibilities of doing it. But we didn’t just dream, we took our computers and started programming. Our flight needed software and only our girls could develop it. With different tools, we built the code to guide our explorer through the red planet, while the girls discovered the immense world of opportunities open to them at their fingertips.

The reaction of the girls was better than we could have expected, so we wouldn’t be surprised if one of them ended up occupying a chair next to ours, or better yet: that one of their names is among the first women to set foot on Mars.

The disparity between men and women in our field is much greater than in other areas. That is why we see in activities like this the opportunity to build a better world, with greater equity and more open doors for everyone.