IT to try out: A look back at Girls’ Day 2026

On 23 April 2026, schoolgirls attending Girls' Day at the SerNet location gained practical insight into the world of IT. Working alongside trainees Janik Frese and Lätizia Braun, the participants learnt about servers, Raspberry Pis, console work, operating systems, routing, HTML and Sphero robots, among other things. The day aimed to make technical career paths more tangible, break down barriers, and demonstrate the diversity of IT.

Reinhild Jung, Managing Director of SerNet GmbH, introduced the company to kick things off. This gave the schoolgirls an idea of what SerNet does on a day-to-day basis: IT security, secure infrastructures and open-source software.

For SerNet, Girls' Day is more than just a one-off event. It provides a safe environment in which girls can explore technical subjects free from stereotypes, performance pressure or reservations. This is important because women remain under-represented in computer science: only 18 per cent of IT professionals are women (source: Bundesagentur für Arbeit 2025).

This year, Girls' Day was once again a trainee-led project. Janik and Lätizia planned and supervised the day on site. After a company presentation and an introduction to the apprenticeship programmes, the schoolgirls learnt what a server actually does and had the opportunity to test their knowledge before experimenting with the Raspberry Pi. Before lunch, the programme also included working on the console.

After lunch, Jule Anger gave a talk on the topic of 'Women in IT', operating systems and routing. This part of the programme in particular broadened the participants' perspective beyond the technical aspects: “Women in IT are not a modern trend, but an overlooked part of its history,” said Jule. She was alluding to the fact that programming used to be a female profession, and that Margaret Hamilton's code, for example, safely took the Apollo  astronauts to the moon.

To round off the event, the participants had the chance to demonstrate what they had learnt during the day in a quiz. Thus, Girls’ Day 2026 at SerNet turned out to be a varied day filled with new insights, practical tasks and the opportunity to get to know IT first-hand.