The 2021 Women in Digital Scoreboard shows a considerable gender gap remains in specialist digital skills, though the gap is closing in internet user skills.
The Women in Digital Scoreboard, as part of the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), assesses the performance of Member States in the areas of internet use, internet user skills, specialist skills and employment using 12 indicators.
The 2021 Women in Digital Scoreboard shows that there is still a significant gender gap in specialist digital skills. Only 19% of ICT specialists and around one third of STEM graduates are women. There has been no progress in these figures over the last few years. The Digital Compass set the target that by 2030, the EU should have 20 million employed ICT specialists, with concurrence of women and men.
The use of internet and internet user skills gap is notably smaller. 85% of women regularly used the internet in 2020 compared with 87% of men. A difference of 4-percentage points can be seen in the digital skills indicators: 54% of women have at least basic digital skills (58% of men), 29% have above-basic digital skills (33% of men) and 56% at least basic software skills (60% of men) as of 2019.
Women are the most digital in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, and the Netherlands. Women in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, and Italy score lowest on female participation in the digital economy and society.