The proportion of men with education in Information Technology compared to women remained considerably higher in 2021, the European Office for Statistics has revealed.
According to Eurostat, there were 2.79 million people employed in this industry in 2021 – 3.3 per cent more than in the previous year. Of this total, 2.35 million, or 84.1 per cent, were men. The share of employed men with such an education background kept rising, 1.3 per cent more than in 2020, when 2.20 million people from this category were employed, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
On the other hand, the number of women with an education in information technology with a job in their field of study continues to decline. The data from Eurostat shows that in 2021, women compromised 15.9 per cent, representing 442,800 employees engaged in ICT. In 2020, women represented 17.2 per cent of the ICT workforce, accounting for 463,800 employees.
The discrepancy in the employment of genders was enhanced, especially in certain European countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and France, where men represented 92.6 per cent, 90.8 per cent, and 89.7 per cent of the workforce with such educational background, respectively.
The list of exceptionally higher employment rates of men in this industry completes with Belgium and Poland, where men represent 89.2 per cent and 89.1 per cent of the total employees.
On the other side, women made up a quarter of employed persons with an ICT education in some of the EU countries with the lowest GDP per capita; Bulgaria (36.6 per cent), Greece (29.4 per cent), Denmark (28 per cent), Romania (27.2 per cent) and Cyprus (26.9 per cent).
Eurostat findings further reveal that the majority of persons employed are young; about two-thirds, or 67.5 per cent, of employed persons, were between 15 and 34 years old in 2021, and 32.5 per cent were between 35 and 74 years old.
People aged 15 to 34 represented the majority of ICT-educated persons in employment in almost all EU countries, with the highest rates being recorded in Slovakia (82.4 per cent), Croatia (82.2 per cent), Romania (78.8 per cent), Portugal (77.7 per cent) and Czechia (76.9 per cent). Finland made an exception, with 49.5 per cent of young people employed in the industry.
Therefore, Finland represented the country with the most 35 to 74 years old with an ICT education in the EU as 50.5 per cent of the workforce consisted of this age group, followed by Luxembourg (45.2 per cent), Spain (40.5 per cent), Sweden (39.7 per cent) and Austria (39.5 per cent).
