E-REDES joined the Alliance for Gender Equality in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), an initiative that aims to attract more women to careers in technology and engineering.
This Alliance for Gender Equality in ICT formalizes and reinforces the network of partnerships already established in the scope of the Engineers for a Day program, and is coordinated by the Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality (CIG), in articulation with the Portuguese Association for Diversity and Inclusion (APPDI). Besides companies, this community includes municipalities, primary and secondary schools, and universities.
The adhesion was formalized on December 14th by the president of E-REDES, José Ferrari Careto, reinforcing the commitment that establishes the basis for cooperation among all signatories. This first meeting of the Alliance for Gender Equality in ICT was attended by the Minister of State and Presidency, Mariana Vieira da Silva and Rosa Monteiro, Secretary of State for Citizenship and Equality, the driving force behind the initiative.
In Portugal, women ICT specialists are only 1.8% of the total employment, compared to 6.2% among men (WiD 2021-DESI). Among ICT graduates, they have gone from 26.2% in 1999 to 20.1% in 2020 (Pordata). The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has accentuated the gap between digitalization on the one hand and the persistent gender gap in digital skills on the other
Thus, E-REDES, in the midst of a digital transition and generational renewal process, bets on increasing the representativeness of women in technical and engineering areas.
