International Women in Engineering Day spotlight: Carine Bournez, W3C

23 June is International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) and celebrates the outstanding achievements of women engineers around the world while also noting that they are still hugely under-represented. As of 2026, it is estimated that 26.7% of the tech workforce globally are women. Last week we released our annual diversity report. We noted that as over 70% of the world is now online and more people continue to access and use the web we develop standards for, the diversity of the whole world needs to be reflected.

In the spirit of International Women in Engineering Day and in celebration of the achievements of women who have helped to make the web, we wanted to highlight W3C’s Carine Bournez whose role is instrumental in bringing to fruition web standards that form the building blocks of the modern web and that connect and empower humanity. She is a Principal and Team Contact who specializes in WebRTC, Web Performance, SVG and Data Shapes and has been deeply involved in web technology and web standards for many years.

Carine joined the W3C team in 2001. She holds an engineering degree and a PhD in Computer Science with a research area in distributed artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems.

Interview with Carine Bournez

Can you tell us a bit of your background and what drew you to engineering?

In high school I was interested in science (in particular chemistry) and also foreign languages. I chose an engineering school with a “European” section (a class with ⅔ of foreign European students, and additional possibility of learning a new language).

What drew you to the web and W3C?

First what drew me to the Web: in 1993 I discovered at the same time IRC, a fabulous way to talk to people across the world, and the Web, a fabulous way to kill time by clicking links and browsing indefinitely (no algorithm involved, but doom-clicking on your own!). Computer Science was not an easy choice, partly because of the very low number of girls studying, and also because the web was not yet really part of it. Studying computer science meant learning programming and all sorts of languages, some more math, some project management. It was already obvious that it was relatively easy to find a job, but the studies seemed “not fit for a girl” to many people in society.

What drew me to W3C: Later on I became involved in Open Source Software and the French-speaking Usenet community. I was interested in the non-profit aspect in particular, and I wanted to find a job that would let me participate in what today we would call “digital commons”. W3C offered me that opportunity.

You joined W3C in 2001, what was happening on the web and W3C at that time?

A lot of the core technologies were still being developed. I spent a number of years around the XML-related technologies, they are still used in a lot of products, even though JSON-based formats are the current trend.

What has changed much is the layering of technologies. A long time ago there was only one kind of computer scientist, programming all the software. Then interfaces became a separate layer, with specialists who would create graphic libraries for example, and new programmers dedicated to front-end, without knowing how the foundations worked. Similar shifts happened over the Web foundations as well. I always chuckle when I see job ads searching for a “full-stack engineer”, it looks like someone who could work on everything in house-building, from putting up the walls to sewing the curtains.

What are you concerned about (can be in the world, the web, technology, W3C, specs, etc)?

The current AI bubble is a big concern. The cost-quality ratio is obviously not good enough. Some applications of LLMs on specific problems bring real improvements (although not good for all languages yet), but genAI brings more problems than solutions, because of the cost, environmental and societal impacts, poor reliability. The Bubbles always grow much larger than the technically-reasonable scope, trying to make money. Someone finds a tiny diamond on a beach, everyone starts to try selling grains of sand.

What’s something you think that gets taken for granted that you’d like to draw attention to (can be in the world, the web, technology, W3C, specs etc)?

(I know that it may sound very Frenchy) Freedom.

Do you have any heroes in engineering/computer science you might want to mention? Anyone you think deserves more kudos?

I have the utmost respect for the late Michael Sperberg-McQueen. He was a friendly colleague who supported me over the years, and he had an incredible ability to take a step back and see the overall picture, while still paying attention to every detail.

A good cause, a necessary cause

Thank you Carine for playing along and allowing us to shine a light on you! The month of June is big on pride, on diversity — for us this is the month we release our annual diversity report. Today we celebrate Carine and the other wonderful women in engineering we have in the W3C Team and in the W3C community. This is an important cause, a necessary one. We hope our readers concur and celebrate a woman in engineering (or many!) but also pause to think how you can help levelling the playing field for all women. Carine fondly recalls this colleague who provided her immense support. For me it’s making sure I promote and have the back of my female colleagues a wee bit more than my male colleagues’ because again, it’s unfortunately still necessary. For some it’s not yet become obvious that they can help and how, and I hope that celebrating causes like this give them some direction. For others it’s something different. I hope it’s meaningful, because it truly matters and truly helps.

This month of June we are also calling for sponsors —big and small— who like us would like to see reflected in web standards and web design the diversity of background, gender, experiences, expertise and skills, to contribute financially to our inclusion fund and Invited Experts support fund ahead of our yearly conference, TPAC, in October 2026, where W3C work groups meet in the span of the same week to make strides in web standards development. 

Please take 3 minutes and watch the video we made at TPAC 2025 on what diversity and inclusion mean to the people who were recipients of those funds.

Effective participation requires significant investment, therefore supporting W3C means enabling practical participation. These funds prioritize support of people from under-represented groups. If you can afford to financially help, please know it has an important and immediate impact.

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