​​​​Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs​

Belgrade, Serbia, 2014, April 24​

SERBIA – Role of ICT on women's labour market position

To further encourage creation of a good work-learning environment for girls to pursue engineering careers, Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs, on the occasion of the International Girls in ICT Day presented results of the Study "Research on the role of ICT–related knowledge and women's labour market situation". Results show that for the first time in Serbia since 2013 there is an equal number of male and female Internet users in young population (up to 24 years old). While ICT knowledge is ranked among the top three required skills, women constitute less than 20 % of professionals in the ICT sector, only 15% of managers and 11% of strategic experts, while they are dominating as experts in general in Serbia. This data can be explained by the higher number of women than men in a total number of university graduates in Serbia. The growth is noticed in the number of females with master's degree. Females accounted for around 35 percent of undergraduate and more than 42 percent of graduate engineering degrees. Key findings include a slight growth in the number of women in some of the male dominated careers and domination in the areas of architecture, technology, agriculture and industrial engineering. The rise in the number of degrees is observed in electrical and computer engineering, as well as in computer science career in 2010.

Extracts from the event can be seen on the following link: http://www.mc.rs/polozaj-zena-na-trzistu-rada-i-ikt-znanja.4.html?eventId=9358

Nevertheless, in Serbia there is an opinion that women are not quite aware of variety of options engineering career has to offer. Regardless of the causes, the findings of this study encourage further promotion of ICT, and for motivating, training and educating women in engaging in ICT sector. 40% of women in Serbia have never used a computer. Women living in rural areas, that have lower than high school education, worse financial status and are older than 55 years use computer less frequently.

ICT revolution opened vast space for improvement of people's quality of life. It means that social groups which for various reasons don't use new ICT or which have low level of computer literacy are in much worse position compared to those having better ICT skills. Our study shows that women can be classified in vulnerable group of ICT users.

Celebrating International Girls in ICT Day Centre for Promotion of the Science and Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Policy organised the first, "Programming is easy to learn" workshop from a future serial, "First step toward successful and equal ICT carrier". Workshops were tailored for girls in the 7th and 8th grade of primary schools interested in ICT and led by volunteers, MA students from technical faculties. The aim of the workshops was to raise awareness about the opportunities of the ICT sector among the girls and to empower them with the knowledge that careers in ICT can be for them.