A
NEWLY PUBLISHED REPORT BY THE EU”S STATISTICAL ARM Eurostat confirms a
long-lived trend in the use of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT). Men are more regular users of both computers and
the internet and many fewer employees in computing jobs are female than
male. In all age groups and across nearly all Member States men used
the internet, and computers in general, more regularly than women, on
average. The gap was smallest among those under 24 and largest for the
over-55s. Statistics by country showed large variations with Cyprus
being the only one to record more female daily computer users than
male. Interestingly eastern European members registered only small
gender differences whereas Luxembourg’s 24-point percentage imbalance
was the highest. Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and the
United Kingdom all had over 10% more men than women using computers
every day. Internet use followed broadly the same pattern.
The older the age group being considered the greater the bias towards
men and the smaller the proportion of both genders who use computers
regularly. Thus, across the whole EU, around 65% of those younger than
24 use computers daily, with only 5% more male than female users, but
only 20% of over-55s are in this category with the proportion of men
being 12% greater than that of women. Turning to employment, the ICT
industry shows a larger bias towards men than the general usage
figures. Nearly four times as many men as women work in computers (2.6%
of male workers compared to 0.7% of female). Neither is this gap
shrinking nor is it likely to in the future. The proportion of employed
women in IT has remained the same since 2001 while the male figure
increased by 0.3%. Furthermore among young people the gap is still
larger at 3.5% compared to 0.8%.
% of Women and
Men using computers every day by age group (2006)
EU
job days are big success
EURES IS THE
NAME OF THE EU’s job mobility portal, a web site that now hosts 1.4
million vacancies, over 40% more than last year, bringing together
300,000 jobseekers with 12,000 employers. For ten days in the autumn it
swapped cyberspace for 230 towns and cities around Europe as 500 events
attracted more than 200,000 participants. Ranging from recruitment
fairs to seminars and lectures on job mobility the ‘Job Days’ were
topped off by the Brussels event at the European Commission
headquarters which was attended by 10,000 people.
‘The Job Days are a perfect example of how the EU can bring real
benefits to people's lives on the issues that matter’ said Employment
Commissioner Vladimir Š
pidla.
‘At the flagship Brussels Job Day, 90% of
employers were entirely satisfied with the quality of candidates they
saw and most will be calling back an average of 40% of candidates for
second interviews’.
Dutch lead rise of ‘union blogs’
INTERNET WEB LOGS OR ‘BLOGS’ have been around for a few years now but
trade unions seem to have been slow to get in on the act. Now two Dutch
unionists have set up a web site under the banner of ‘union renewal’ to
provide a forum for comments on the new challenges facing the movement.
These include globalisation, outsourcing and the participation of
migrants and young people. Editors Dirk Kloosterboer and Tonny Groen of
Netherlands Trade Union Confederation FNV cover the World in English
and welcome contributions.
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