In the European Union, 8.4 million professionals work in the information and communication technologies (ICT) industry, but only 18.5 percent of them are women. In Hungary, this rate is only 12.3 percent. At home, IT is still considered a masculine profession, but at the same time, companies want to see many more female digital specialists in the sector – it turned out from the IVSZ’s latest Femintech research.

Stubborn numbers

According to the report, in 2020, the proportion of female ICT professionals was the highest in Bulgaria, 28.2%, and the lowest was observed in the Czech Republic, 10.2%. In the European Union, after the Czech Republic and Malta, our country had the lowest proportion of women among ICT professionals in 2020. This shows some improvement compared to 2017 and 2018, when this rate was the lowest in Hungary at the regional level, only 10%. Female candidates are mostly missed by large companies and companies with an international background, and about 31% of the surveyed companies also stated that there is a great lack of female competences in the organizational culture of large companies.
“The involvement of women in the field of technology not only promotes the creation of diverse and inclusive work environments, but also brings fresh perspectives and new ideas to companies, which ultimately promotes development and the success of the company,” said Katalin Korcsok, Sales of the Hungarian office of the Qualysoft Group. and Director of Business Development.

The female workforce is becoming more and more attractive

35.4% of the respondents admitted that their advancement is hindered by stereotypes against female IT workers, and nearly 30% believe that giving up their work for the sake of the family can be an obstacle to their career development. On the other hand, a low percentage of female employees thought that the fact that ICT companies are not flexible in terms of employment (10.2%) and that they are not family-friendly workplaces (7.4%) is an obstacle to women’s career development in the IT field.

The pandemic seems to have changed a lot in the ICT sector: working women were less vulnerable to layoffs, as the sector was the first to switch to home offices and telecommuting. Looking to the future, the hybrid employment structure will probably remain with us for a long time, which is also a lucky turn, because the sector is also becoming more and more open to the integration of women’s skills, and a process has begun in terms of building a physically and psychologically safe working environment around female colleagues.

“In the large corporate segment, we also experience the need for women’s knowledge, since the technical and IT field and the digital world are not only about rationality, it is quite a complex, innovative segment where, in addition to software development, the ability to project approach, business approach, business analytics and teamwork , as well as shared attention is also necessary,” confirmed Katalin Korcsok.

“Those companies can become future-proof, which are able to operate communities with different experiences, ways of thinking, and social roles, and combine all this with technological development. It is important that female employees are given tasks based on their competence, so that they can be helped to become more confident in their profession, and help the teams to be effective with their activities.”

According to the expert, both women and men still have to overcome a lot of stereotypes, which is why there is a great need for good practices, role models and mentors who, thanks to their approach, succeed in setting up new operating models for organizations.

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