National cultures and gender balance in ICT: a preliminary study

In this paper, authors study what factors explain the scanty presence of women both in the studies and in the industry of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector. For this, we analyze three socioeconomic variables (Unemployment, GDP per Capita and Gender Equality Index) and the six cultural dimensions by Hofstede. Both the data of the socioeconomic variables and the percentages of women students and workers in the ICT sector are extracted from Eurostat. The data of the different cultural dimensions for each country analyzed is obtained through Hofstede insights. All of the countries belonging to the European Union have been analyzed with the exception of Cyprus (N = 27). The statistical analyses performed is based on bivariate correlations and simple and multiple regression analysis. The results obtained report that none of the selected socioeconomic variables (Unemployment, GDP per Capita and Gender Equality Index) is determinant to explain the scanty presence of women in the studies and in the ICT industry. Likewise, the cultural dimensions do not conclusively explain the scanty presence of women in the studies and in the industry sector, with the exception of the dimension of Masculinity vs. femininity. According to the results obtained, the most masculine countries, that is, more oriented towards achievement, competitiveness and material rewards, show a lower presence of women in the ICT industry. Some explanations are proposed to understand these results.