Lesson 8Check the datas! Why inclusive project management matters ?

Notion 54

Datas about women in the digital field

Target skills

Being aware of the reality of women inclusion in the digital field

Women are generally underrepresented in the digital field. The gendered representations conveyed by society and organizations, the strength of stereotypes, and gendered socialization seem to be the main causes of this under-representation of women in digital professions. Certain factors play a role at all times when a career decision is made. For instance, the influence of media, the lack of knowledge concerning the professions, the absence of female role models, and a corporate life sometimes seen and experienced as difficult for women. Let’s have a look at some figures on women’s place in the European digital sector.

Women and tech in the European Union

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In the European Union, only 25% of women have graduated in digital fields. 13% of these graduates work in the digital sector. According to the DESI 2020 report, only 18% of ICT specialists in Europe are women.
According to the State of Europen Tech 2021, 38% of women working in European tech report having experienced some form of discrimination in the past 12 months, compared to just 13% of men.

Women holding important positions in Tech : scientists and engineers in 2019

As these Eurostat data shows in 2019, only one in five high-tech engineering and scientific positions were held by women last year in the EU. However, the representation of women in tech can vary quite a bit from country to country.

As these data collected of Statista.fr shows, Norway and Spain, among others, have the most women scientists and engineers in tech fields in Europe, at around 28%. France also does better than the European average with a share of just over 23% last year. Conversely, women are much less visible in this sector in countries such as Switzerland and the Czech Republic, where they represent only 15% and 14% of scientists and engineers respectively.

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Women and entrepreneurship in European tech

Women also seem to be discrimnated against in tech entrepreneurship. According to the State of European Tech 2021, « the great gender funding divide remains a harsh reality for the European tech ecosystem ». The distribution of capital to founding teams composed of women or teams of founders of mixed genders has stayed constant for the past five years, both in terms of share of total capital invested and overall deal count. The graphic below includes some figures of the State of European Tech 2021 and shows the critical under-representation of women in fundraising : in 2021, male teams represent 90% of the capital raised, compared to 8.8% for mixed teams and 1.1% for all-female teams. As for the deals, male teams represent 83.7% of them, against 10.8% for mixed teams and 5.4% for teams composed exclusively of women.