Social Builder : Professional Retraining into the Digital Industry

Social Builder is
driving gender equality
in the digital economy

Our vision

To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and leave no one behind by 2030, we urgently need to close the gender gap in the digital sector.

Almost 400 million more women than men have no access to the internet, and the gender gap is widening especially in developing countries. Women hold less than one quarter of all jobs in the global tech industry, with the proportion dropping drastically in higher-paid leadership or technical fields – only 6% of all software developers are female.

We believe that a system change is needed, with actors at all levels and across all sectors working together intelligently, moving from either/or to both/and, co-designing solutions that are holistic and women-centred.

Who we are

Social Builder is a not-for-profit social enterprise that designs and deploys innovative solutions empowering women to thrive in the digital economy.

Founded in Paris in 2011, we opened an office in New York in 2019 and have to date accompanied over 70,000 women in developing their technical and relational skills, as well as over 300 organisations in facilitating inclusion.

We are honoured to be co-leading the Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality Action Coalition from 2021 to 2026 for the Generation Equality Forum, convened by UN Women and co-hosted by the governments of Mexico and France.

Our partners

Our approach

Women-centred

We start from the realities lived by women in all their diversity and design solutions to meet their specific needs.

Under the banner of Facebook’s #SheMeansBusiness program, we designed and deployed in 2018 a series of bootcamps in major cities across France and an online course reaching 15000 women seeking to develop their intra- or entre-preneurship and leadership skills in the digital space. Building on the success of this pilot edition, we trained 100 ambassadors in 2019 to run #SheMeansBusiness masterclasses in their region which were deployed throughout 2020.

The SUNS program – developed during the COVID-19 crisis in partnership with the multinational bank ING – accompanies unemployed women with an entrepreneurial idea to develop the digital, entrepreneurial and leadership skills they need to get their project off the ground, with 76 hours of online training over 3 months in mutually supportive cohorts.

Holistic

We strive to understand and address the different systemic barriers from both sides, getting the tech industry more interested in women and women more interested in tech

Adabot – our chatbot named in honour of Ada Lovelace – is one way that we seek to spark curiosity in women about Tech, guiding since 2018 over 9000 women in their professional transition to the Tech industry.

Together with Syntec Numérique, an IT industry body, we launched in 2019 a Manifest for Women in Tech. 155 companies have signed the manifest to date, publicly committing to concrete actions that promote gender equality in digital professions.

Co-design

We build partnerships at all levels and across all sectors to accelerate systemic change, with each actor bringing their unique expertise and worldview to the table.

Our Women In Digital program – retraining unemployed women as web developers – is currently being deployed across Île-de-France, the largest region in France with a population of over 12 million people, in partnership with the regional government and the French national employment agency, training partners, funding support by JP Morgan Chase & Co. among others, and mentors coming from companies such as Salesforce, Thales, BNP Paribas, Michael Page.

Join us in making gender equality in the digital economy a reality

US Office

66-72 Saint Nicholas Avenue
NEW YORK, NY 10026

Let's talk

Social Builder is driving gender equality in the digital economy