The 2021 Women in Digital Scoreboard shows that significant gender gaps in specialised digital skills persist, although this gap in internet users’ skills is narrowing.
The Women in Digital Scoreboard, which is part of the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), assesses Member States’ performance in terms of internet use, skills of internet users, professional skills and employment with 12 indicators.
The 2021 Women in Digital Scoreboard shows that there are still significant gender gaps in specialised digital skills. Only 19 % of ICT specialists and around one third of STEM graduates are women. There has been no progress on these figures in recent years. The Digital Compass set a target for the EU to have 20 million ICT professionals employed by 2030, with the consent of women and men.
The lack of skills
among internet users and internet users is particularly low. In 2020, 85 % of women regularly used the internet, compared with 87 % of men. A difference of 4 percentage points can be observed in digital skills indicators: 54 % of women have at least basic digital skills (58 % of men) since 2019, 29 % have at least basic digital skills (33 % of men) and 56 % have at least basic IT skills (60 % of men).
Women are the most digitalised in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia and the Netherlands. Women in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and Italy score the lowest in terms of women’s participation in the digital economy and society.