Today is International Women’s Day, and to celebrate, here are two events scheduled to highlight women’s contributions to the tech sector.

They come on the heels of a Women in Tech roundtable hosted at Notman House at the end of February.

Wednesday, March 8th: Founder Lounge #WomenInTech Panel

Tonight, at WeWork Place Ville Marie, there is a special panel taking place: the Founder Lounge #WomenInTech event. The joint initiative of MTLNewTech, Desjardins Lab, Minibulles, ailes.co, and WeWork, the panel will bring together technology leaders to discuss the challenges they face.

Panelists include: Christine Renaud (e-180), Delphine Guyot-Giler (Stardust Testing), Kim Berthiaume (Affordance Studio) Cassie Rheaume (Ladies Learning Code Montreal), Soodeh Farokhi (C2RO), Pamela Sasha (Ask Pam), and Vanessa Labelle (Desjardins). The event is sponsored by BDO.

Happy International Women's Day #Montreal! Can't wait for our #WomenInTech panel tonight in honour of #IWD2017 TIX: https://t.co/KAwbRG6mAO

— MTL NewTech (@mtlnewtech) March 8, 2017

“For the last three years we have been doing the MTLNewTech Demo Night #womenintech. Last year we had 8 amazing women entrepreneurs to demo their product and showcase role models to inspire more girls and women to join the startup ecosystem, and this year we wanted a more intimate setting with deeper and more meaningful conversation. Our Founder Lounge event was the perfect setting,” Ilias Benjelloun of MTLNewTECH told MTLinTECH.

Despite record numbers of women graduating with bachelors degrees, even surpassing their male counterparts, that unfortunately doesn’t translate into gender parity in tech jobs. The panel aims to stimulate conversation around what can be done in the Montreal ecosystem. The diverse panelists will have the chance to relate the real-life challenges they currently face as women working in the tech sector.

“We decided to go beyond our regular Founder Lounge with one founder, and rather have a full packed evening of learning, sharing, and networking to take full advantage of the exposure of International Women’s Day to bring role models for other women (and men!) to be inspired by,” said Benjelloun.

The event will start with cocktails at 5:30 pm at WeWork’s office at 3 Place Ville Marie, and the panel will begin at 7:00 pm.

Tickets are $12 for startup entrepreneurs, $7 for students, $25 for professionals, and $45 for service providers. Click here to get your ticket before tonight.

Saturday April 1st - Sunday April 2nd: Women Techmakers Montreal 2017

After a successful one-day-only event last year with more than 200 attendees, 17 speakers, and 7 sponsors, the second edition of the Google-created event promises to be even bigger and better.

Went to the first Women Techmakers Conference Montreal. Thank you! Inspiring boldness, clarity and excellence #WTM16 pic.twitter.com/1PtwwZrzjz

— Laura Glass (@LauraGlass64) March 13, 2016

Organized by Annie Caron and Laurence de Villers, both in their mid-twenties, the main objective is to promote talented and passionate women and to increase the visibility of Montreal’s technological community.

Their motivation for starting the event stems from personal experience: Caron was the only female out of 100 to graduate in software engineering from École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), de Villers could only count one other woman in her graduating class.

The theme for this year’s two-day event is “Telling Our Story”. It will feature 19 speakers chosen from 130 submissions. Diversity was the main theme in selecting the speakers, and the finalized program features a non-binary speaker, individuals who didn’t learn to program until they were 50 years old, and a conference on people with ADHD or imposter syndrome, disorders that present in both women and men in the IT sector.

Tickets are $175 plus processing fees and taxes, and include: access to all sessions; breakfast, lunch, snacks and coffee both days; dinner on the first day; coat check; party; daycare for children, if needed.

Click here to view the full program and buy tickets.

Featured photo credit: Rim Tazi Photography