Women make up half of the world’s population, yet their voices are silenced in many strategic areas. One of these is professions. ROOT (science, technology, engineering And maths, for its English abbreviation), calls to mark the future. But this future could be deeply unfair due to lack of representation. female talent threatens to hinder mitigation efforts. gender inequality this has historically divided society.
All studies point in the same direction. Women participate in these technical fields less than men. wage They are inferior and occupy fewer positions of responsibility. They represent 33.3 percent scientific researchers According to a study conducted by UNESCO Released in 2021. In the case of members of national academies of science, this figure drops to 12%.
Report warns of inequality that also harms women promotionsaccess scholarships or having your work represented in top publications. “As women advance in their academic careers, the gender gap widens, with less participation at each rung of the ladder, from doctoral student to assistant professor, from research director to full professor,” the report said. The statement is included. This persistent inequality threatens to increase gender biases in STEM fields; because if problems are addressed only from a male perspective, the interests of half the world’s population will be forgotten.
This is a global problem that is also observed here. Only 8.6% of 100,000 tech professionals Catalonia According to Cercle Tecnològic’s DonaTIC barometer, they are women. Moreover, they earn an average of 19% less than their colleagues. The number of women in management positions fell to 31% last year. Generalitat Digital Policies Secretary, Gina Toast, called this data “devastating.” This is even more so considering that this gender imbalance is the norm in Europe.
According to a study by ONTSI (National Observatory of Technology and Society), 17.8% of Hispanics pursuing STEM education at the state level are women. Information technology experts represent 19.4%. despite wage range At 8.6%, Spain offers the most positive figure in the European Union (EU), where women earn on average 19.3% less than men for the same job. World Economic Forum places Spain among the 15 countries with the highest income gender equality of the world.
However, a report from UGT Encrypted the wage difference for 2022 digital sector by 16.1%. “Spanish companies do not have the ability to create an attractive job offer for technologists,” said Susana Romero, head of the union’s communications and culture sector in Madrid. In the same research, it is stated that 40 percent of female employees in the IT sector claim to be discriminated against due to gender.
lack of talent
HE technology sector Spaniards attribute some of this gender gap to limited food supply. experts Citizens in STEM professions. Since the Covid-19 outbreak, companies have been trying to speed up their work. digitization and they did so by rapidly increasing the demand for high-skilled jobs linked to technology and science. But the need to have experts It grew at a greater rate than the current one in both areas. So, according to data from the Spanish Association for Digitalization, an employer association consisting of 60 companies such as Telefónica, Mastercard, Cellnex or EY, approximately 120,000 jobs remain vacant in these sectors every year.
STEM branch stands out among the fastest growing professions. However, the lack of experts is also reflected in the low rates is hiring number of women for these profiles. So, according to LikedIn analysis, female talent represents only 5% of hired site reliability engineers, 7% of cybersecurity engineers, 9% of cloud systems engineers, and 15% of data or AI engineers.
The Spanish Government wants to change this trend and has therefore set the target of exceeding 2.12 million Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) professionals by 2030. Currently, Spain is the third country in the rankings. European Union According to the report, it is only Italy, France and Germany that have more experts in this sector (EU). Digital Decade in Europe Prepared by consulting firm Deloitte.
STEM, job opportunity
The STEM sector represents a future job opportunity. According to report data The future of work in Europe¸ According to the report published by the McKinsey Global Institute, more than four million STEM jobs will be created in Europe in the next decade. These works will be undertaken generation ZBecause they will represent 75% of Spain’s workforce in 2030. For example, in the United States, occupations in these regions will grow by approximately 10% between 2020 and 2030; This is a faster increase than the average for all jobs.
In the short term, the talent shortage could be solved by the arrival of qualified foreign workers. In the long term, it was decided to increase the incentives. education among young people. The generational shift will not only produce more STEM professionals, but will also address the lack of female representation. However, the gender gap is also reflected in employment. studies. According to Eurostat data, 32.3% of those enrolling in these technical careers are women. The figures are particularly bad in computer science, where only 12% of students are female, and engineering, where they represent 24%. Young people’s interest in STEM careers is also growing among women, but the disproportion among men remains a reality.
Stereotypes and competitions
Experts note that the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields is due to a wide range of educational, socioeconomic and family factors. Them stereotypes as well as gender related to professions that hinder their education” gender bias “The impact of STEM teachers and unmotivating teaching methods through a society with little scientific literacy,” explained Yolanda González Arechavala, President of the Pontifical University of Comillas, responsible for the promotion of women in STEM professions in vocational education for sustainable mobility.
Spain is starting from a complex situation to reverse this problem. According to 2019 data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the rate of women graduating from science, mathematics, computer science, engineering, industry and construction fields is 11.9%. This puts the country at the bottom of the European rankings. scale.
In search of reference
Like a fish chasing its tail, the lack of women in STEM professions contributes to the problem. “Girls need female references “We need to be aware that we are as suitable as men for technological careers,” Lucía Urcelay, a 23-year-old biomedical engineer currently studying for a master’s degree in artificial intelligence at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), explains to EL PERIÓDICO. last December..
The number of strong-sounding Spanish female names in the STEM field is increasing. This is the case of the computer scientist Raquel Urtasunis known worldwide for its artificial intelligence research applied to autonomous vehicles. Born in Pamplona, he founded Waabi, a pioneering self-driving company, and was included and featured in Time magazine’s select list of the world’s 25 most influential leaders in artificial intelligence. Elon Musk.
Other female references such as Urtasun and computer engineers Nuria Olivercan be an inspiration to many young women, among others. But their situation is not the norm. According to the European Gender Equality Index (EIGE), the proportion of women in leadership positions on the boards of large companies in Spain in 2022 was 32.2%.
European Union Figures for women’s participation in decision-making have remained stagnant over the past decade and it will take three generations to reach this figure at current pace, the EU has warned parity. Although the report does not break down its results by sector, everything indicates that this imbalance exists in the STEM sector as well.