Overcoming gender bias in the digital economy. Empirical evidence for European countries

Abstract This study aims to contribute to understanding the gender biases that emerge in the digital technology-related field. More specifically we concentrate on examining whether gender gaps are diminishing or are persistent in terms of women’s enrollment in technology-related programs at the tertiary level of education and for female STEM graduates. Next, this evidence is confronted with gender biases in the labor market regarding changing female and male employment in high-tech sectors; we detect whether gender gaps grow or diminish in this respect. Our data cover 29 European countries in the period 2011–2020 and are extracted from World Economic Forum reports, Eurostat, and UNESCO databases. Our methodological framework combines time trends analysis, cross-country inequalities, distributional changes, and non-parametric approximations examining relationships between variables. Our major conclusions support the view of negligibly diminishing gender inequalities in technology-related education and demonstrate increasing gender gaps regarding high-tech employment.