“Women protagonists in the digital age”, a day organized by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, within the framework of International Women’s Day

March 6, 2023.- The First Vice-President of the Government and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño, has inaugurated the conference "Women protagonists of the digital era", organized by the Ministry in the framework of International Women's Day, March 8, and which has debated the closing of the gender gap in the digital society and the active participation of women as leaders who transform the world in this era.

Nadia Calviño highlighted in the inaugural speech the importance of economy and gender equality going hand in hand “because we cannot afford to waste 50 percent of the talent of the population”. In this regard, he has highlighted the draft law that will be presented in the Council of Ministers to establish quotas of 40 percent, as a tangible commitment for companies and the need to establish “a reasonable calendar that achieves that parity that will make us better from an economic and social point of view”.

Digitisation is a key tool to take advantage of technological change in favour of gender equality, and at this point, the First Vice-President of the Government wanted to highlight key projects such as the lines ENISA for entrepreneurs or training in digital skills, as tools to develop one of the main axes of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, gender equality.

Digitalization and entrepreneurship: closing the gender gap

Tatiana Manso, directora de Digitalización de R&D en Arcelor Mittal (Directivas en el ámbito digital), Claudia Gómez, CEO de Senniors (Beneficiary Line ENISA - Digital Entrepreneurship), Arantxa Alviz, Crimtan - digital nomad at La Pipa y María.

Eugenia Girón, president of the Foundation for Diversity, led the first round table, moderated by Jaime García Cantero, (Retina).

In 2022, female entrepreneurial initiatives outperformed male-led projects for the first time. The main stumbling block for women founding startups remains funding, a bias in the allocation of capital that makes it necessary to have more female investors, and more in technological innovation. The new law of startups, the initiatives launched by Red.es, or the project digital entrepreneurs, of ENISA, which aims to support and promote, through funding, women's digital entrepreneurship projects and reduce the existing gender gap, are some of the public measures to be highlighted in this area.

Gender bias has also been debated in Artificial Intelligence, where a majority of men program machines, which always have a woman’s voice. That women program the algorithms of the IA In order not to perpetuate gender biases and that in addition to leading research in this sector, they also reach the leaders of companies, it will be a key factor, in the opinion of the experts.

Connectivity in rural areas, 21st century roads

María González Veracruz, Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures, and Cristina Fernández Armesto, partner and granddaughter of founders of Casa Grande de Xanceda, they have talked about digitalization and connectivity in rural areas.

The Secretary of State has highlighted the Government’s goal for ultra-fast broadband to close the digital divide in the rural world by 2025, and among the public measures developed from her department, has highlighted the Program UNIQUE Rural demand, broadband of at least 100 Mbps And at a price of 35 euros per month for the end user, with the aim of closing the digital divide in rural, remote and sparsely populated areas throughout the territory. For María González Veracruz, connectivity (“the roads of the 21st century”) is the route that connects us and has a transforming power in people’s lives, and in “any woman, with a good idea, in any corner of Spain”.

Cristina Fernández Armesto, socia y nieta de fundadores de Casa Grande de Xanceda, has valued the arrival of fiber to its organic livestock company, in the province of A Coruña, “undoubtedly the biggest milestone of the company, which represented the definitive take-off, was a before and an after”. E-commerce, GPS technology, data collection to boost efficiency, and the arrival of fiber, have increased productivity in this company and provided new opportunities for women in this rural area, in Casa Grande de XancedaThey're 60 percent of the staff.

The gender gap in the digital society, a report by ONTSI

Rosa Díaz Moles, director of the National Observatory of Technology and Society, ONTSI, has presented during the day the new report “The gender gap in the digital society 2023”.

In Spain, 17.8% of the employed population with training STEAM They are women. Another fact of the study that shows gender inequality is that, in 2020, in Spain there were 12.3 graduates in STEAM For every thousand inhabitants between 20 and 29 years old, compared to 29.2 graduates. In addition, women are a minority in university and vocational studies in the field of engineering and computer science. These differences are reflected in the labour market. In 2021, only 19.4% of the total specialist