{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","contentId":"0000017f-dd7c-d5e4-a77f-ff7c4ba50000","url":"https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/aws/technology-powers-art-and-social-equity-at-aws-and-beyond","headline":"Technology powers art and social equity at AWS and beyond","description":"Learn more about girls and women who are working with tech and find out how AWS customers are innovating to increase gender equality.","datePublished":"2022-03-31T18:53:01.854Z","dateModified":"2022-03-31T18:53:01.854Z","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Amazon Staff","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://assets.aboutamazon.com/dims4/default/08549ff/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1125x1125+438+0/resize/84x84!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.aboutamazon.com%2F47%2F6d%2F7fe296e642859c7ba2a629eda3ba%2Famazon-logo-hero-images-2024.jpg","width":"84","height":"84"}}],"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://assets.aboutamazon.com/dims4/default/bbaa295/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1598x1065+1+0/resize/300x200!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.aboutamazon.com%2F74%2Ff6%2F254303fb44d8a7bf99e7e66caf0f%2Faws-girls-who-code.jpg","width":"300","height":"200"},"articleBody":"![An image of two young women working together on a laptop in a classroom.](https://assets.aboutamazon.com/dims4/default/bbaa295/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1598x1065+1+0/resize/300x200!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.aboutamazon.com%2F74%2Ff6%2F254303fb44d8a7bf99e7e66caf0f%2Faws-girls-who-code.jpg)\n\n# Technology powers art and social equity at AWS and beyond\n\n*Learn more about girls and women who are working with tech and find out how AWS customers are innovating to increase gender equality.*\n\nEvery day, women make history.\n\nWomen use technology both creatively and functionally to effect change. For Women’s History Month, we're showcasing Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers—from nonprofit to corporate—using tech to create institutional-level transformations that benefit girls and women.\n\n### Technology elevates art: AI art exhibit by a women-led team\n\nAn all-women team created a luminous, interactive sculpture commissioned by AWS and powered by AWS artificial intelligence (AI). The exhibit is at the \n\nSmithsonian\n\n Arts and Industries Building on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.\n\n![An image of a large white structure with multiple glass shoots coming out of it. At the end of each shoot is a small light. There are small circles within the structure that have smaller clusters of lights with a purple tint. The structure stands in the middle of a museum, and two people are walking by it.](https://assets.aboutamazon.com/dims4/default/56e8103/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1800x1200+60+0/resize/300x200!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.aboutamazon.com%2F4c%2Fde%2F00b201404fb7a58019202d2d16d4%2Faws-smithsonian.jpg)\n\n- [Take a peek \"behind the art\" with the Official AWS Podcast ](https://aws.amazon.com/podcasts/fixthis46smithsonian/)\n\nTitled *[me + you](https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/aws/aws-unveils-me-you-an-ai-powered-sculpture-at-the-smithsonians-arts-and-industries-building),* the piece resulted from the collaborative vision of India-born architect and artist Suchi Reddy, arts curator Isolde Brielmaier, and AWS.\n\nThe installation is—literally—brilliant. The sculpture consists of thin, flexible sheets of LEDs, diffusers, acrylic tubes, and paper.\n\nWhen visitors contribute their vision of the future by standing near the sculpture and saying the words \"My future looks…,” and filling in the rest, AI technology translates their answers into patterns of light and color.\n\n“It’s been this fantastic series of connections with amazing women who led us from the big idea to do an exhibition about the future to the very specific manifestation of *me + you* in our rotunda,” said Rachel Goslins, director of the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building.\n\n“Technology allows museums to open up and become more accessible,” said Brielmaier. She added that it causes them to \"really think very, very critically about issues of diversity and equity.” \n\nReddy and Brielmaier’s work on the sculpture represents art innovation by women in the 21st century, as they take the discipline into new territory.\n\n### Nonprofit impacts careers: Girls Who Code\n\nThe median wage in tech is double that of the national median wage, with an estimated half-million new tech jobs emerging by 2029. [Girls Who Code](https://aws.amazon.com/podcasts/35-fixthis/) is one of the largest girls’ international nonprofit organizations in the world. The organization endeavors to close the gender gap in entry-level tech jobs by 2030.\n\nGirls Who Code is doing its part to prepare girls for the jobs of the future through programs like Girls Who Code clubs. The clubs are communities for students in grades 3–12, where they learn coding skills and examine portraits of women who work in tech, as role models. The nonprofit organization also has a virtual, two-week Girls Who Code Work Prep program for young women. The program includes mentorship from women working in tech.\n\n![GIrls_Who_Code_image.jpg](https://assets.aboutamazon.com/dims4/default/897e745/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5760x3840+0+0/resize/767x511!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.aboutamazon.com%2F5b%2Ff3%2F0d755e2f4590996f9b16be80e2a1%2Fgirls-who-code-image.jpg)\n\nThe organization’s initiatives serve dual purposes by impacting wage and opportunity gaps for girls of color. Girls Who Code works with corporate partners to address equity issues, including credentialing and promotion practices. It also advocates that firms consider girls and women from non-traditional backgrounds who can bring value and unique perspectives and strengths to the tech industry. Girls Who Code is an AWS customer and uses AWS technology solutions.\n\n### Companies create change: 8PERCENT and ADP\n\n**8PERCENT**\nThe Korean financial services firm [8PERCENT](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQK58D870f8) is a fintech pioneer. When it launched in 2014, it created an industry segment that didn’t yet exist in Korea.\n\nHyojin Lee, the company’s founder and chief executive officer, also overturned conventions by making 8PERCENT a mid-interest rate, loan-based business. Her company entered an environment where high-interest rates were the norm.\n\n![A composite image of 5 women founders ](https://assets.aboutamazon.com/dims4/default/2c1a828/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3377x2251+312+0/resize/300x200!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.aboutamazon.com%2F3e%2Fc7%2F2a9383cd455f9149615efefb7116%2Fwomens-founder-header-1920x1080.jpg)\n\n- [Women founders: How to beat bias to get backing for your business](https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/aws/women-founders-how-to-beat-bias-to-get-backing-for-your-business)\n\nThe woman-founded startup has raised over $24 billion (28 trillion KRW) in loan application funds. Building its products and services on AWS, the company aims to change the future for borrowers and investors, and help grow the wealth of ordinary Koreans investing via the 8PERCENT app\n\n.\n\n**ADP**\n[Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP)](https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/adp-2021-reinvent-video/) is best known for its payroll, benefits, and human resources services, though it has also been doing work in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) through its DEI Dashboard. Built on AWS, ADP helps companies run analytics to examine their workforces using segment variables including gender, ethnicity, veteran status, and age.\n\nADP also created Pay Equity Storyboard on AWS. The Pay Equity Storyboard provides insights, tools, and visualizations that a company can use to identify pay equity gaps between the company’s workforce and similar employers. The storyboard also provides proactive solutions to correct gaps. ADP launched the storyboard in the summer of 2021. By December 2021, over 210,000 people saw their pay increase, on average, by $3,500.\n\nAccording to ADP analytics that tracked employment statistics from the start of the pandemic in March 2020, job losses exacerbated the existing pay gap between men and women. \"Men actually fared a lot better than women during the pandemic,” said Jack Berkowitz, chief data officer at ADP. According to ADP, women lost 20 years of progress in terms of pay-equity gaps during the pandemic.\n\nThe storyboard helps companies identify the pay-equity gaps at their firms—including gender-based gaps—and delivers insights that empower companies to proactively address disparities.\n\n“Now is the time to use data to help people understand what actions we can take to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment and build the future we all want,” said Berkowitz.\n\nFind more examples of AWS’s commitment to DEI throughout the year on the [All Builders Welcome](https://aws.amazon.com/diversity-inclusion/) and [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Customer Stories](https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/diversity-equity-inclusion-dei-customer-stories/) pages.","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"About Amazon","url":"https://www.aboutamazon.com","sameAs":["https://x.com/amazonnews","https://www.linkedin.com/company/amazon","https://www.instagram.com/amazonnews"],"logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://assets.aboutamazon.com/bd/8f/88e7b0314cc2bd05b9de3155a0fe/amazon-news.svg"},"parentOrganization":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Amazon","url":"https://www.amazon.com","sameAs":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3884","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)","https://x.com/Amazon"]}}}