As an analysis of data from the IW Skilled Labour Database shows, the proportion of women in professions with skills profiles that are particularly relevant to digitalisation is just 16.3%. Compared to a share of 14.6% in 2013, the situation has improved only marginally over the last decade. Particularly in occupations such as construction electrics (2%) and mechatronics and automation technology (1%), the proportion of female skilled workers is dramatically low. Only in isolated digitalisation occupations such as cognitive science (76%) or graphic, communication and photo design (60%) does the proportion of women predominate.
Gender-specific differences can also be identified outside of pure digitalisation professions. For example, men use advanced digital technologies and specialised software disproportionately often. The “digital gender gap” is most pronounced in patent applications in digitalisation technologies, where the proportion of women is only 5.2%.
In order to counteract the negative effects of the digital gender gap on the economy and society, the study proposes a series of concrete measures.
As the “International Computer and Information Literacy Study” has shown, the digital skills of girls in the eighth grade exceed those of their male classmates. In contrast, girls’ self-assessment of their digital skills is significantly worse. Accordingly, girls and young women need to be made more aware of their digitalisation-relevant skills at school. In addition, career guidance programmes should be more strongly geared towards the many fields of application of digital technologies.
