Work in Parliament Maria da Graça Carvalho coordinates proposals to involve more women in Information and Communication Technologies

Maria da Graça Carvalho was appointed responsible for the European Parliament's own initiative report on “Bridging the digital divide between men and women: participation of women in the digital economy”, aiming at developing proposals for greater involvement of women in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

According to the European Commission study "Women in the Digital Age" (2018), only 24 out of every thousand women with higher education degrees completed training in the field of ICT. The same study calculates that, with a greater involvement of women in the digital economy, the additional return for the sector could exceed 16 billion euros annually.

Maria da Graça Carvalho is a member of the FEMM commission - Women's Rights and Gender Equality, in the European Parliament, in which she was already shadow rapporteur of the “Women on Boards” directive, regarding the promotion of greater gender parity in the boards of directors of listed companies.

This week, during the plenary session in Strasbourg, the Graça Carvalho praised the initiative of the European Commission, in its first 100 days of mandate, to present proposals on remuneration transparency. However, she stated that “concrete and binding measures” should be presented, both with regard to the principle of equal pay for equal work and with regard to “the role of women in sectors of increasing importance in society, such as the Computer Science and Digital Technologies”.