Barcelona Digital City

The European Commission report, Women active in the ICT sector, reveals that across Europe only 29 out of every 1,000 female graduates gain a degree related to computer science (compared to 95 male students). This number reduces significantly to just 4 if we are talking about Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) alone. Females tend to abandon the sector during their careers, which means that only 9% of those who studied ICT still work in the field by the age of 45.

In Catalonia, according to the Agència per a la Qualitat del Sistema Universitari (Agency for the Quality of the University System), during the 2015-2016 academic year, only 13% of students enrolled on ICT courses were female. Of every 1,000 women, only 4 work in the ICT sector.

The City Council drafted a study entitled L’ecosistema de les TIC des de la perspectiva de gènere a Barcelona (The ICT Ecosystem from a Gender Perspective in Barcelona), which confirmed this data on the under-representation of women in this field, although it did highlight, among other things, that the gender pay gap in this sector (-10.7%) is clearly less than the Barcelona average (-21.8%).

We are promoting the role of women in the technology industry in order to strive for equality in this sector. The gender divide, although smaller than in other industries, still exists. It must therefore be tackled through education, encouraging scientific and technological vocations among girls.

Barcelona City Council is working on empowering women in technology to enhance the equality of women. i.Lab's Girls for a Change, Data and Women Hackathons, and Empowering Women in Tech are some of the events promoted.