State Secretary in the Ministry of Trade, Tourism, and Telecommunications Tatjana Matić has welcomes the participants of projects “IT for women as well”, to the ceremonial reception regarding the completion of their training, the MP Club in Belgrade.
“You are part of the programme believed to have contributed not only your personal benefit and pleasure, but the development of the digital economy in Serbia, motivation of women to get involved in digital trends in large numbers”, Ms Matić has said.
30 women from Novi Pazar, Raška, Tutin and Sjenica have undergone a training in Java and web coding within the project “IT for women as well”, implemented by Association “Lighthouse” from Novi Pazar.
This is one of nine projects approved in the Public Call of the Ministry for granting funds to rpogrammes in the field of development of the information society 2017, on raising the level of digital literacy and digital competences – retraining and additional training of women in IT.
State secretary has reminded that this programmes, conducted for 230 women in total, in Vranje, Zrenjanin, Kragujevac, Novi Sad, and Belgrade is an important measure defined in the Strategy of IT Development, aiming at developing staff in that sector, and in parallel at encouraging gender equality in the sector where women are not present enough.
She has stated the research of the Ministry according to which there are no big differences between genders when it comes to the use of new technologies, where there are 86% of men and 83% of women using the Internet. Then, mobile phones are used by 87% of men and 79% of women, and the difference is a bit higher when it comes to the use of computers, where regular users are 75% of men and 60% of women.
“Women are more familiar with new technologies when it comes to their use, while in the sector itself, especially at top positions in IT companies there are more men than women, and the women are actually present with 20 per cent, which is also the European average”, state Ms Matić, announcing that compared to the results of these realised projects, the programme of retraining of women in ICT will be extended to the next cycle.
