38.7% of companies in the technology sector had at least one woman hired in 2023, compared to 61.3% that dispensed with female talent in this sector, which is included within the STEM field (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Despite these figures, 64% of the new jobs related to science, innovation and new technologies that were created that same year corresponded to the female gender, according to the 2023 EPA (Active Population Survey).
Although the latest data is positive, one of the conclusions of the Women and Innovation Report 2024, carried out by the Women and Science Unit of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities in collaboration with the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, points out that participation and Women’s leadership in promoting innovative initiatives continues to be insufficient.
The latest Survey on the use of ICT and electronic commerce in INE companies reveals that more and more companies use AI and similar platforms, in fact, at least 9.6% of companies with 10 or more employees used Artificial Intelligence in the first quarter of 2023. To do this, not only computer licenses are needed but also specialized human capital, an evolution that has not occurred proportionally to the presence of women ICT experts.
The Women and Innovation Report, cited above, reflects that Since 2018, their presence has decreased 11.4 percentage pointsthat is, almost half of the companies did not have any female ICT specialists hired, while currently that number rises to six. Since 2020, their representation has been lower, “which could be related to the pandemic, when many of them left their jobs to dedicate themselves to care,” the document adds. The presence of women specialists in ICT sectors in companies, whose main activity is far from the STEM sector, is even smaller than in companies in which the main activity is the technological field. In the former, women represent 6.4%, with 3.8% in Industry, 1.6% in Construction and 8.9% in Services.
Female talent in ICT teams
Within companies that do have ICT women on their staff, there is hardly any parity. Only 8% of the total companies have hired more than 50% of women specialists in the technology sector. 14.4% have between 25% and 50%, which is the case of T-Systems Iberia, a German multinational computer services company that operates in Spain and in which “almost 30% of the professionals are women” , says Cristina Caamiña, director of the Granada and Reus Value Centers at T-Systems Iberia. Meanwhile, 13.3% of companies have between 10 and 25% women hired in ICT positions.
In both the technology sector and the STEM sector, there is another gender gap: their position in the company’s organizational chart. The 2019 Labor Insertion Survey of University Graduates, the last available, which carried out a study on what graduates were doing 5 years later, concluded that It was less common for a woman with a STEM degree to be a STEM professional. than a man with the same qualification, and much less likely to have a managerial position. They tended to direct their careers toward teaching, administrative functions, or becoming technicians in a non-STEM area. This same survey indicated that one of the reasons for this gender gap was work-life balance, because the STEM sector in Europe required a rate of hours worked per week slightly higher than that of all other fields, added to the fact that they were and are Women tend to reduce their working hours to dedicate themselves to caregiving.
The other labor gap corresponds to the performance of leadership tasks. Within the business field, in high and medium-high technology (AyMAT) positions, female professionals represent one in every 3 positions occupied, 31% of the population employed both as R&D personnel and as research personnel. Caamiña insists that at T-Systems Iberia the female gender serves all types of professional profiles, “from consultant, data scientist, IT architects, to project manager, software developer, experts in user experience, Cloud, AI , or sales professionals.” He adds: “They represent 17% of the company’s management positions.”
The gap arises from school
The choice of the future university professional begins to be decided at the high school stage, in which the female gender in scientific and technical branches represents 21.5%. In the university entrance exams, they take Physics and Technical Drawing less, but their grades are slightly higher than theirs. Even so, the rates of women out of the total number of people enrolled in STEM university degrees does not reach 50% in almost no case. Science high school students usually choose socio-health. Therefore, the area in which they have a high representation is in internal R&D activities in biotechnology, which They occupy 57.7% of jobs, according to Statistics on the use of Biotechnology.
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