Women who are returning to work or seeking a new job have been advised to carve out a career where they can do what they love, because working in a job that is not enjoyable will only lead to dissatisfaction and resentment.

Women in IT have been encouraged to design female-friendly apps that can help women in their work and personal lives. An Apps to Empower Women challenge has been launched by IdeasProject to find the best app ideas for women and the best one will be developed by a team of women in software developer jobs.

The European Commission and the Brazilian Government have agreed, at their annual Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) dialogue in Brasilia, to launch a new coordinated call for research and development proposals with €10 million available in funding.

European Commission officials will participate in events organised on November 16 and 17 in The Hague and Scheveningen in the Netherlands, in order to present to stakeholders and the public the Digital Agenda for Europe. The event in The Hague will focus on the Horizon 2020 programme, the future EU funding programme for research and innovation, under which ICT research activities will be conducted from 2014 to 2020. This event takes place in the context of the ICT Delta 2011 World Forum. The event in Scheveningen will focus on both the European and Dutch Digital Agendas. The visits are part of the Going Local exercise, run by the European Commission for the second year in a row, in order to foster a public dialogue on the Digital Agenda goals.

Gendered Innovations employ sex and gender analysis as a resource to create new knowledge and technology. The Gendered Innovations project: 1) develops methods of sex and gender analysis for scientists and engineers; 2) provides case studies as concrete illustrations of how sex and gender analysis leads to innovation. It is crucially important to identify gender bias and understand how it operates in science and technology. Analyzing sex and gender prospectively can serve as a resource to stimulate new knowledge and technologies.

Women 2.0, an organization whose goal is to increase the number of female founders in technology startups, is sharing some good news today: the number of women starting companies has doubled over the past three years. The new data comes from a survey of its own community, which includes everyone from actual founders and co-founders to aspiring entrepreneurs. Back in 2008, Women 2.0 ran the same audience survey and found that 25% of its community were women founders. Today, more than 50% of its audience can now say the same.

Australia’s gender equality agency will develop industry-specific benchmarks in attempts to improve pay equity and boost the number of women in the workforce. Under legislation to be introduced in parliament in the next fortnight, organisations with more than 100 staff will be required to provide numerical data to the government on gender equality indicators. The first reports, due in 2013, will be used by a newly renamed Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) to inform its development of industry-specific benchmarks.

Intel in Shannon continued its focus on promoting science and engineering in the local area by holding its sixth annual Women in Technology (WIT) award ceremony recently. Four new scholarships were awarded, bringing the total number of scholars to 12 for the 2011/2012 academic year.

Media-N, Journal of the New Media Caucus is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for the 2012 Spring Edition – Guest Edited by Katherine Behar and Silvia Ruzanka entitled "In search of digital feminisms". Deadline for reception of abstracts/proposals is October 15th, 2011.

Women working in the IT industry across the globe are joining together on October 7th to mark Ada Lovelace Day. While it is a fitting tribute to recognise the first computer programmer, the day also aims to raise the profile of all women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). It calls on women in IT and other STEM careers to share their story about a woman who has inspired them to become who they are today by writing a blog, filming a video, recording a podcast, or through any other medium.