EC shadowing scheme promotes women in IT

In a bid to encourage more women to enter the IT industry, the European Commission (EC) unveiled the results of its second annual Shadowing Initiative in Brussels this week.

The EC’s shadowing programme is designed to forge links between young women and female IT professionals currently working in organisations across Europe. Girls of between 14 and 16 years old are able to shadow a female engineer for a day to get insight into careers in the technology sector.

At this week’s event, the EC presented the results and video footage of the 2008 Shadowing Initiative, alongside running workshops on attracting women to IT careers. More than 50 girls took the opportunity to shadow a female IT engineer, while 20 organisations took part, including the University of Southampton, L’Oreal, Fujitsu and Nokia.

The pilot scheme in 2007 involved only 6 girls and 5 IT vendors, so the second scheme proved a success – both in terms of the increased number of participants and the broader array of organisations involved.

According to the EC, there is a shortage of around 300,000 qualified IT staff across Europe, a shortfall that could be addressed by attracting more females to the sector.

"If this shortage of computer scientists and engineers is not addressed, it will eventually slow down the European economic growth and Europe runs the risk of falling behind its Asian competitors,” said Viviane Reding, commissioner for Information Society and Media at the Brussels event. "We need to overcome common stereotypes, which describe IT careers as boring and too technical for women, and instead encourage women to succeed in this exciting, innovative and multi-faceted sector.”

Reding also unveiled plans to establish a European Code of Best Practices for Women in ICT, which would aim to breakdown IT worker stereotypes and address the issue of current female engineers leaving the technology sector.

The EC conference comes just ahead of the annual International Women’s Day on 8 March, which will see thousands of events taking place across the globe aimed at inspiring women and celebrating their achievements.