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Code of Best Practices for Women and ICT 

The ECWT and the National Point of Contacts (N-PoC) actively participate in the key initiative and campaign of the European Commission: the Code of Best Practices for Women and ICT.

The European Commission has already in year 2007 decided to do something about the growing concern for the expected shortage of 300,000 qualified engineers in the European Union by 2010 and the fact that fewer than one of five computer scientists are women. The Commission began a dialog about how to encourage through joint efforts that telecom and internet companies can attract and retain more women to the ICT sector.

The Code of Best Practices was first signed the 3rd of March 2009 by Alcatel-Lucent, Imec, the Orange-France Telecom Group, Microsoft and Motorola. This is the first set of practical EU initiatives to enhance women's experience in ICT careers.

The Code includes a set of initiatives adopted by the companies e.g. mentoring programmes during maternity leave that will help women keep up to date with the latest technology developments, practical help in balancing family and work-life including flexible working hours and home working, ICT forums to offer women support on job searches.etc. The Code also sets targets for the recruitment and promotion of female ICT professionals and shows good examples of how to attract more girls to schools and university and from there into the high-tech sector.

"The signing of this Code of Best Practices is a first step towards making high-tech jobs cool for girls and getting more women into the ICT sector. I congratulate those companies that today have the courage and conviction to commit to this code, that will enrich the ICT sector by making it more female-friendl" said Viviane Reding, Commissioner for  Information Society and Media (2004-2008) at the launch of the initiative.

The 8th of October 2009 twenty-three new stakeholders signed the Code in Brussels and in March 2009 - a year after the initiative was started the number of signatories has reached 50.

By the end of 2010 the number of signatories was over 70.

When receiving the Aletta Jacobs Prize in 2010 Vice President Neelie Kroes, Commissioner of the Digital Agenda emphasized: "The spread of this Code of Best Practices is one of several actions the Commission is taking to address the ridiculous situation where young women now use computers as often as men, and get more university degrees than men, but are still virtually absent from high-tech jobs. This does not make social or economic sense, not least because e-skills are key to an inclusive economic recovery! The answer is in front of us: we must invest in women, and this investment must be driven by the industry itself."

 

For more information

Josephine Wood
Policy Officer
European Commission DG INFSO
tel:  +32 2 295 10 87
e-mail: Josephine.WOOD@ec.europa.eu

In Members States, in case you have any questions about your organizations commitments to sign the Code, you are welcome to contact your National Point of Contact (N-PoC) of the ECWT and from wider Europe you can contact Eva Fabry, Director of the ECWT, e-mail or +47 924 77 960.

What formalities do I need to follow to sign the Code of best Practices?

1. Print the enclosed text of the Code, with your company's logo and sign it on highest level:

 Code-of-Best-Practices.doc

2. Send the document with a cover letter to
Vice President Neelie Kroes
Commissioner for the Digital Agenda
European Commission
B-1049 Brussels - Belgium

3. The Commission is annaually announcing the new signatories in connection with a festivity to which all the new signatories are invited.

Signatories of the Code the 3rd of March 2009

Signatories of the Code the 8 October 2009

From 28 to 50 signatories the 8th of March 2010

Latest news:

In connection with the launch of the Belgian N-PoC in the Belgian Senate the 4th of March 2011 seven organizations have signed the Code of Best Practices.

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