Women in ICT in Kosovo
Author: Diellza Agaj
The position of women in Kosovo has long been a controversial social and political issue. Efforts have long been made to emancipate women and engage them in mainstream society. This effort has made girls attend school, as well as the push to open more jobs for women.
Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MEST) from an annual statistical report with published educational indicators for 2018/2019 shows that the total percentage of students in the last two years is 86.8%, which is unfortunately compared to the years the past has dropped by 3.4%. Whereas in terms of female education compared to the last 50 years, female intellectual development has evolved which has highlighted her educational development and assuming other responsibilities beyond the bounds of predetermined thinking, which is also shown in the annual report statistics published by MEST that the participation rate of women in education in the last two years is 87.8% compared to men which are 2.2% higher.
As far as the field of study is concerned, it is very important to select it properly by providing yourself with advantages and convenience in the labor market. Given the economic growth and employment opportunities, information technology is considered one of the most promising areas and therefore the access of women and girls in this field is offering them many employment and professional development opportunities. According to data released by The Future Workplace (TFW) platform in recent years, the number of female students in the field of ICT has increased significantly compared to male students. According to data from The Future Workplace platform, the number of female students in the ICT field is approximately 24% higher than men.
The Woman in ICT Initiative is a global effort aimed at raising awareness and encouraging young women and girls to pursue studies focusing on information technology. According to a publication by STIKK (Association for Information and Communication Technology of Kosovo) titled “Women in Technology”, in Kosovo only 20% of the ICT sector workforce is women, while a similar situation is in place. EU where only 30% of the approximately 7 million employees in the European ICT sector are women.
When it comes to women heads of companies (businesses) in Kosovo, it often seems like the challenge is the key to their journey. Despite the barriers, there are many women in Kosovo who have managed to set up their own businesses and have been very successful. There are also those that have managed to bring and develop international businesses in Kosovo. From data obtained from the Kosovo Agency of Statistics (KAS) women in the Kosovo economy still face many challenges, in the labor force, more than 80% of women are inactive, and for other women activists, the unemployment rate is about 40%.
Nowadays, technology is advanced to a great extent. The field of Information Technology is being applied in almost every other field: medicine, construction, geodesy, economics, and many other fields. Day by day this technological development impulse is increasing by facilitating and replacing many manual works performed so far. Such development is occurring not only in males but also in females. Day by day women is getting educated and developing professional skills in the field of Technology as well. In the research “Women in technology, challenges of women in the field of information and communication technology” conducted by STIKK (Association for Information and Communication Technology of Kosovo), it resulted that there are about 2% of women employed in specialized institutions. for ICT, but the number of women exclusively employed in ICT positions within these institutions ranges from 0–20%.
Also from the Open Business platform, data on female-led businesses results in a significant increase. In the last 10 years, 14.46% of active businesses are led by women. While in the field of ICT in Kosovo approximately 12.22% of active businesses are led by female owners, while 79.75% are led by men.
Prejudice against women in the field of ICT and the mentality that the profession in this field belongs to the male gender are just some of the barriers women face in Kosovo who want to pursue a career in the technology sector. In order to eradicate such a mentality and to push women to choose the field they want to study, several projects have been created where their main purpose was to raise the awareness and interest of girls and women to get involved in ICT. Some of these projects are: “Girls in ICT”, a project that was implemented by the KS-Kosovo Non-Governmental Organization in 2014; Another initiative is Girls Coding Kosovo, which aims to encourage and motivate women to choose the programming field as an opportunity for their profession and many other initiatives.
To stimulate them towards a successful and lucrative field is also marked by the International ICT Girls’ Day which is celebrated every year around the world. This day gives girls and women the opportunity to access information on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in a variety of stimulating ways, encouraging them to consider the future in the technology sector.
This article was published as part of “The Future Workplace” Project.
The Future Workplace is part of the Dig Data Challenge powered by Millennium Foundation Kosovo (MFK) and Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) as part of the The Dig Data Challenge on Labour Force Data. This project is implemented by Open Data Kosovo and The Kosovo Chamber of Commerce.
