EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding attended on Friday the Global Meeting of the Women's Forum for Economy and Society in Deauville (France) to meet with other female leaders from politics and industry. The Commissioner stressed the importance of getting more 'Cyberellas' - women with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills into the ICT sector as this will be a powerful tool to address the shortage of 300,000 ICT qualified staff expected in the EU by 2010.

Women contributions to engineering-technology and life sciences sectors have been exponentially increasing in the last decade. On the other hand women still face great difficulties in developing professional careers in equal opportunities to those of men in these sectors, especially regarding their proportion and representation at the higher levels of hierarchical ladder.