Brussels, 05/03/2014 (Agence Europe) - In the context of International Women's Day, Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, states on her blog on 4 March that the European economy potentially lost €9 billion in 2013 due to the lack of women working in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. Kroes deplores the low number of women working in the new technologies sector, particularly the booming apps sector, despite the fact that the high-tech industry was suffering from a severe staff shortage. She states that “today, less than 30% of the ICT workforce is female and the number of female computing graduates has been dropping in Europe for years”. Out of 1,000 women with a bachelor's degree in Europe, only 29 have a degree in ICT (compared to 95 men). Kroes said that “not only are we facing an overall digital skills gap in advanced economies, but we are creating a seriously unbalanced part of the economy: only 9 in every 100 European app developers are female”.
Kroes does not believe that women lack interest in computer science and new technology but she believes that the current social model is not encouraging them to go down this path. (IL)