The project was launched by Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services, Digital Economy and Innovation Silvio Schembri and Parliamentary Secretary for European Funds and Social Dialogue Aaron Farrugia.

The lack of women participation in the IT sector is a problem experienced all across the European Union, and the whole world, nowadays. In 2017, the employment rate for men in this sector in the European Union was 76.9%, while for women it was 65.3%. Therefore, the target for 2020 in the EU is to reach 75% for both genders.

The initiative will be implemented in many countries, like Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania and Spain with €2.7m as the total budget allocated for this purpose. Out of this fund, Malta can call for €346,672 between September 2018 and August 2021.

The project is hoped to develop digital competencies and employability of young women vulnerable of getting out of a job, as well as to provide innovative solutions to increase the numbers of young women in ICT careers and in the digital economy. Special focus will fall on unemployed young women, women returning to work after maternity leave and women coming from low income or disadvantaged families. The main tools used are awareness-raising, skills assessment, innovative partnerships with employers, development of a new online employability profiling tool and training in digital jobs, according to the DOI release.

“As a country, we have improved a lot within the digital space, now becoming a main point of reference, yet we are still lagging behind in women participation. If addressed now, the digital sector could be the first sector where we could see women on par with men”, said Mr Schembri.

“This is an exciting time for women. After registering a spike in the number of women elected to the European Parliament, I look forward to the next legislature to see the fruit of the positive measures being taken locally to increase the number of women in the Maltese Parliament”, said Mr Farrugia.

“It is encouraging to see the government fully committed to reducing the digital divide and organisations coming together today to support this collaborative framework. Thanks to this commitment we can ensure that women and young girls are truly allowed to decide their future and regain their destiny” said Dana Farrugia the CEO at Tech.MT, an organisation launched by the Malta Chamber of Commerce in cooperation with the government, aiming to help support further growth of the local technology sector.

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Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services, Digital Economy and Innovation Silvio Schembri launched the initiative, which is done through a collaboration with Malta Business Network, with the involvement of stakeholders active in the industry.

Since the lack of female participation in the sector is a challenge across Europe, with this move, Malta is hoping to strengthen its position on a global scale further. Despite comprising 52% of Europe’s population, women only hold 15% of ICT-related jobs in the continent, which figure is even lower for Malta: 2.7%.

“The past few years have seen an unprecedented rise in digital and communications technologies, which, together with the digital economy, have dramatically changed every aspect of life as we know it,” Mr Schembri said. At the same time, the skills and competency levels of ICT professionals have undergone a substantial deficit, which issue the government hopes to remedy through higher female participation in this industry, the parliamentary secretary added.

Mr Schembri also noted that Malta was the first European Union member state who launched a National eSkills Strategy, aspiring to address the need for continuous professional development and upskilling specialisation of the workforce in the sector.

The parliamentary secretary also underscored the importance of making existing initiatives more accessible to young women. “We need to collectively strive to end gender stereotyping and cultural discouragement which negatively affects our young women and their opportunities in the digital labour market,” Mr Schembri concluded.

Efforts to include women to a higher ratio in the IT industry appear to come in time. On the one hand, women have traditionally been discouraged from choosing a career related to engineering or information and communications technology globally. On the other hand, the pay gap has been significant between men and women internationally, favouring men over women in the same positions; an issue that is recently being addressed on a broader scale by companies and legislators.

The post Maltese initiative aims to attract more women to IT jobs first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.