The similar patterns of German and Greek ICT usage, education and careers of women and men, and the fact that women are still lagging behind, support the necessity of promoting equality in the field of ICT. A starting point would be raising the self-confidence of girls, and taking into account the facilitating role of teachers […]

The issue of women in ICT professions, especially in leading positions, was discussed on the CeBIT 2009, a conference for professionals in the IT sector in Hannover. An initiative was started to attract more women to this sector, especially by improving the working conditions, exceeding the concept of just combining family and work but taking […]

ICT & Gender at Professional Level in Germany. We retrieved exemplary data from the annual survey of the German Institute for Employment Research (IAB)3, which monitors the development of unemployment and professions subjected to social insurance contributions. The IAB provides the following data for women and men employed as data processing professional, and computer scientists […]

The underrepresentation of women in ICT-related professions is even stronger than at tertiary educa­tion level. Less women than men who graduated in computer science and informatics choose a career in this field. According to Dick and Rallis (1991), career choice is influenced by people’s self-concept, their perception oftheir own abilities, and the subj ective value […]

Explanations that have been provided in literature regarding the gender gap refer to the societal stereotypes and work conditions. Women are more attracted to professions that are offered by the State (i. e. teachers) since such positions are considered to be “stable” and easily leave space for other obligations women have (i. e. children, family […]

According to Eurostat1, Germany and Greece are among the European countries with the lowest percentage of women enrolled at university level. In 2007, 49.7 percent of the students in Germany were female, in Greece 50.4 percent of women studied. The EU-27 average is 55.2 percent. The number of maths, science, and technology (MST) graduates increased […]

A university degree can be seen as an entrance ticket to a well-paid career in the ICT sector. In Germany, surveys of the Computerwoche maga­zine and Kienbaum consultancy show that the required qualification level for ICT professions is quite high and the majority of employees in the ICT sector graduated either at university or university […]

The figures above reflect and support several other research findings from different countries. The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta, 2008) reports thatimplementing ICT in education improves motiva­tion and attainment of boys and girls. However, this increase is higher for boys. This may correspond with the finding that girls use ICT at home for […]

To get more insights into the issue of ICT inter­ests and competencies at school in Greece and Germany, we have run an empirical study. In this study, the particular interests of male s and female s in upper secondary classes have been researched into. The instrument was a questionnaire which asked pupils about their particular […]

Due to the rapid development of new media and information technologies, the efforts of educating pupils in this field need to be monitored and evalu­ated continuously with up-to-date and relevant content. Media education and media literacy need to take into account the use of current informa­tion — and communication technology (ICT), and new digital media […]