Women 5.0 gathers nearly 80 people in Madrid to reflect on entrepreneurship, technology and artificial intelligence

Women 5.0 in Madrid: Building Digital Confidence and Responsible AI Use

During the month of June, Action Against Hunger held two in-person events in Madrid as part of the European project Women 5.0, an initiative designed to make digital skills and artificial intelligence more accessible to women entrepreneurs and to people working in entrepreneurship support and social innovation.

The events took place on 8 June at the International LAB in Madrid and on 23 June at the Centre for Innovation in Technology for Development itdUPM. Together, they brought together nearly 80 participants and were held with the collaboration of the European Network of Innovation for Inclusion. The first event was co-organised with iLAB Madrid and Cink Venturing, while the second was co-organised with itdUPM.

Both events started from a shared idea. Digitalisation is already part of the everyday reality of any entrepreneurial project. It shapes how an entrepreneur presents herself, connects with clients, organises her work and makes decisions. For this reason, talking about women’s entrepreneurship today also means talking about technology, artificial intelligence and the conditions needed for more women to take part in this transformation on their own terms.

Women 5.0 addresses this challenge from a practical perspective and with a gender-sensitive approach. The project does not see technology as an end in itself, but as a space of opportunity: a space where women entrepreneurs can strengthen their projects, increase their capacity to act and decide how they want to bring innovation into their own businesses.

Its starting point is clear. Many digital barriers are not about a lack of ability, but about unequal paths, fewer role models and experiences that have often kept many women away from technological environments. For this reason, the project does not start from the idea of teaching technology from the outside. Instead, it aims to create the conditions for each entrepreneur to integrate technology into her own learning process, needs and goals.

From digital uncertainty to confidence

From this perspective, the events were not designed as a series of demonstrations, but as practical spaces to reflect on the role technology can play in an entrepreneurial project. At a time when artificial intelligence is often associated with urgency or automation, Women 5.0 proposed taking a step back and asking a deeper question: How can these tools be incorporated without losing judgement, autonomy or decision-making capacity?

The first event, “From ‘I don’t know’ to ‘I’ll try it’: women entrepreneurs, technology and AI”, focused on digital confidence. The session brought together Santi Ros, from Action Against Hunger, as moderator; Ana Alarcón, Entrepreneurship Coordinator at Action Against Hunger; Laura Sanz, Operations Director at Cink Venturing; and Noemí Carbonero, co-founder of Rebeldía Tech. The conversation explored how technology is transforming entrepreneurship support and what many women entrepreneurs need in order to approach it with more confidence and strategy.

In this context, Noemí Carbonero’s workshop brought artificial intelligence into the everyday reality of an entrepreneurial project. Her approach focused on learning how to engage more effectively with AI and how to use available tools more consciously. The quality of the results depends on how a need is expressed, the context that is provided and the ability to review responses critically. In this sense, using AI does not mean stopping thinking. It means opening up new possibilities to look at the business with more information and perspective.

Using AI without losing control

The second event, “Rebels in the face of AI: how to use AI without losing control”, took this reflection into the field of responsibility. The session featured Jesús Salgado, professor at UPM’s ETSI Industriales; María Celia Fernández Aller, UPM professor with a PhD in Law; and Natalia Rodríguez, founder and CEO of Saturno Labs, telecommunications engineer and artificial intelligence specialist.

The conversation revolved around a question that is becoming increasingly relevant for any entrepreneurial initiative: How can artificial intelligence be used without losing the ability to decide? Issues such as privacy, authorship and the ability to oversee the use of AI do not only concern large technology companies. They are also part of the decisions that a small project makes when it incorporates technology into the way it works and relates to its community.

The workshop by Natalia Rodríguez helped bring these debates closer to the reality of those who design and deploy technological solutions. One of the central ideas was that the value of AI does not begin with the tool, but with the definition of the problem. Before automating, it is important to understand what need is being addressed, what information is being used and what limits must be clear from the beginning. In AI, designing well also means deciding what a system should not do, even if it is technically able to do it.

Digital training beyond tools and applications

This idea connects with one of the main lessons of Women 5.0. Digital training cannot be limited to teaching applications or functionalities. Tools change quickly. What remains is the ability to ask good questions, interpret results, protect information and decide when technology brings real value to a project.

That is why the project places artificial intelligence within a broader conversation about autonomy, inclusion and participation. Incorporating AI into women’s entrepreneurship does not mean following a trend, but opening up new possibilities to work better and make more informed decisions. Nevertheless, those possibilities only become transformative when women entrepreneurs can make them their own, adapt them to their goals and use them through their own voice.

Building digital confidence together

The events held in Madrid also showed that digital confidence is built with others. Learning technology is not only an individual experience in front of a screen. It also involves sharing doubts, recognising common barriers and creating spaces where trying things out is not perceived as a test, but as a natural part of learning. Almost ironically, meeting in physical spaces strengthens this confidence in a way that digital contact cannot always achieve, creating closer and safer connections from which to explore technology among peers.

Through these events, Action Against Hunger and Women 5.0 strengthen a line of work focused on making technology more accessible to women entrepreneurs from an inclusive and applied perspective. Artificial intelligence opens up new possibilities for entrepreneurship, but its real value will depend on more women being able to decide how, where and why they use it in their own projects.