Entrepreneurial Women In ICT – Enhancing Skills to Bridge Digital Divide Erasmus Project

Project Title

Entrepreneurial Women In ICT – Enhancing Skills to Bridge Digital Divide

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Gender equality / equal opportunities

Project Summary

The Entrepreneurial Women In ICT – Enhancing Skills to Bridge Digital Divide project aims to minimize the gap between men and women regarding ICT and entrepreneurial competences and opportunities.
Spain has been usually characterised by high unemployment rates. Particularly, the economic crises of the last years has largely affected the young people and the adult people with a lack of ICT skills. Portugal had also very high levels of unemployment despite the improvement in the latest years. In terms of gender employment gap in Europe, Portugal and Germany are below the EU average, on the other hand Spain is over the EU showing larger gap between genders (Eurostat, 2018). Besides, the women’s work conditions are significantly worse than the men’s one (OECD, 2017). For example, women who find a job in the OECD Countries will be significantly less remunerated than men (OECD.Stat, 2018) and they will more likely have an involuntary partial job than men (OECD.Stat, 2018).
Following the data in Eurostat, some of the lower rates of women and men employment are related to women’s ICT skills proficiency (Ministerio, 2014). The access to the learning services is one of the relevant factors that can explain this lack of ICT competencies. The kind of women’s work experience and the productive sectors where women are traditionally employed are also possible explanations of their lack of ICT professional skills. Besides, women are not only less trained in the ICT field, but also in the entrepreneurship field (OECD.Stat, 2018f). The combination of these two kinds of competencies is important to enhance the probability to achieve a quality job placement (OECD, 2017). In addition, these data are important since the ICT skills proficiency is proved to entail quality job insertion. Specifically, women’s ICT skills proficiency improves the wage equity as it contributes to close the gender wage gap.

E-Women In ICT project will use formal and non-formal methodologies, in order to develop various intellectual outputs (e.g. women access conditions framework, online educational toolbox, innovative online multidevice platform, Pedagogical, Assessment, Validation and recognition tools as well as a pedagogical model for online learning) and related activities (such as a blended mobility of vet women learners) to attain the major project aims:
1- to increase the knowledge on women labour conditions/opportunities in ICT and entrepreneurism,
2- to develop innovative materials to assist educators,
3- to enhance the ICT and entrepreneurial skills of women,
4- to increase awareness of the gender digital and labour gaps,
5- to influence policy makers in order to bridge the digital divide between genders.
6 – to disseminate results, promote impact and to keep the results sustainable after the lifespan of the project.

The target group of our project is mainly women (VET learners) with or without ICT and entrepreneurial skills that want to (re)gain competences in these areas, but the beneficiaries will go beyond the target group itself and will include the enterprises, educators, researchers, labour market, VET providers, and the civil society. We intent to involve directly in the activities of the project over 200 participants from the mentioned groups.
Training women and endowing them with additional ICT skills may therefore contribute to increasing their wages and help bridge the gender wage gap (OECD, 2017c, p.17). In addition, this proposal is in line with National (e.g. InCode 2030) and EU policies and Challenges (e.g. Horizon 2020, Gender Equality Programmes) through the enhancement of ICT and Entrepreneurial skills of women. The project intends to be innovative and to be able to share good practices inside and outside the partnership. Having a multidisciplinary team, including an Enterprise, two Higher Education Institutions an Adult Education institute and a VET institution, with different backgrounds and realities regarding the gender gap in ICT and Entrepreneurship.

By achieving these goals, we hope to have an important impact in society at various levels and in various participants, inside and outside the partnership with long term benefits. Improving women skills, can lead to high levels of employment and better wages, raising the chances for a higher motivation, better quality of life and a greater integration in sectors of activity that are mainly being filled by men.
Also, by using active methodologies and distance learning environments, we hope to better prepare participants and stakeholders to situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 224079 Eur

Project Coordinator

Instituto de Tecnologias Avançadas para a Formação Lda & Country: PT

Project Partners

• INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DE SANTAREM
• COMUNITAT ESPAI GIRONA SL
• Centre d’Estudis Politècnics S.L.
• FA-Magdeburg GmbH