Launch of the ‘Guidelines to Increase and Retain Women in ICT’

• April 11, 2018
• admin

The eSkills Malta Foundation is the National Coalition forming part of the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs. Most of the Digital Coalitions host pledges to increase the participation of girls and women in digital jobs. As part of the Digital Agenda, the eSkills Malta Foundation has made this an important part of its objectives.

The Foundation is aware that, despite the evidence that allowing more women to enter the digital jobs market can create an annual €9 billion GDP boost in the EU area, there is still a very large ICT gender gap in Europe. With this in mind, the eSkills Malta Foundation is proud to announce the launch of the ‘Guidelines to Increase and Retain Women in ICT’. The guidelines have been drawn up to help in addressing the issue of the low percentage of women in the ICT sector.

These guidelines are aimed at all stakeholders who may have concerns about the low percentage of women in the ICT sector. The relevant stakeholders can be small, medium and large enterprises together with NGOs, gender equity advocacy coalitions, the media, educators, career advisors, the government and decision makers. The introductory part of these guidelines provides a short summary of facts and statistics that describe some issues that women face in the ICT Sector and then suggests possible reasons why women are underrepresented in this area. The second part of the document provides guidelines that may be adopted for increasing and retaining women in the ICT sector.

The launch held on 11th April 2018 at the MITA Data Centre was attended by Honourable Minister Helena Dalli, Minister for European Affairs and Equality and Honourable Silvio Schembri, Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services, Digital Economy & Innovation. Both Honourable members also took part in the panel discussion.

Click here to view the document ‘Guidelines to retain and increase Women in ICT’