200% more women join professional training

BENGALURU: Nearly 5,000 women enrolled with Simplilearn to upskill themselves over the past six months, a 200% increase over the preceding six-month period.

This happened as the California based online education provider of professional certification training ran a campaign titled #She-TakesCharge on social media, in addition to sending out surveys to customers six months after the completion of their courses, to put together insights on professional advancement among women.

“We reached out to over 15,000 Twitter users and combined their inputs with survey responses from our customers. The results show that women today are making significant efforts to upskill themselves, despite various personal com mitments,” said Kashyap Dalal, chief business officer of Simplilearn.

Dalal said the popular categories among women are interestingly digital marketing, big data, project management and analytics, largely perceived to be male dominated technologies.

Take the case of data science, for example. The study shows that one in three data scientist certification trainees is a woman. The lure of data science research and utilising data-driven insights to help bring about positive change continues to draw more women to the field.

Project management also seems to be a career of choice, with women accounting for 30% of certified project management professionals. But digital marketing takes the cake, with women (55%) outnumbering men. “It is encouraging that women are making a mark in fields previously thought to be male-dominated.

In India, 20% of our learners are women, out of which close to 12% are individuals who want to get back to their careers from maternity and personal breaks,” Dalal said.