State Secretary in the Ministry of Trade, Tourism, and Telecommunications Tatjana Matić has said early today that women in the sector of information and communication technologies contribute to the creativity and productivity of this industry, and that their higher involvement in this field is of key importance for the future of Serbia.

At the presentation of the programme “Various perspectives on women in technology”, organised by the American Chamber of Commerce in the USA Embassy in Belgrade, State Secretary has said that the research of international organisations confirm that the companies and institutions ignoring gender equality and any other type of equality risk to lack productive and creative workforce.

“This is particularly important for digitalisation. Fewer women today in IT today means fewer women in all innovative economic sectors to be developed out of the IT, i.e. on the positions of the future. Therefore, if we do not reduce that gender digital gap, women will have no benefit from digitalisation, and on the other hand, the sector will have no growth of all the potentials”, warned Ms Matić.

She has underlined that the gender disbalance is also present in Europe, where studies in the field of ICT enrol four times more men than women, while in Serbia, it is around 15% of young women enrolling ICT studies.

“For encouraging the gender equality in ICT, and raise the level of staff at the same time, Ministry competent for information society and telecommunications has participated in the initiative for the introduction of computer science as an obligatory subject in schools, and launched and realised networking of all primary and secondary schools to the Academic network of Serbia, which provided schools with free and stable Internet connection”, Ms Matić has reminded.

“In the domain of informal education, Ministry has launched programmes of support to retraining of women in the ICT sector, and financed other projects as well which can contribute to the employment in ICT, education and gender equality”, she added, mentioning the programmes of support to IT communities, in Belgrade, Majdanpek, Valjevo, Kikinda, Kragujevac, Vranje, Sombor, Bor, and Niš, as well as regional project Xbit, including the encouraging of women towards the IT entrepreneurship.

“We especially encourage girls to decide for education in this field, through the project Day of Girls in ICT, celebrated from 2010, in April, within the International Telecommunication Union, at the initiative of the Republic of Serbia”, State Secretary concluded.