There are 4 times more women amongst the IT students in Belgium (37 % of students) than in the Netherlands (8 %). Actually, at the EU level, Belgium tops the list. To all the IT people out there, any idea why Belgium is topping the list ?
[source](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/10321595/Share+of+female+students+in+ICT+studies.png)
6 comments
I have no clue why, but I recently changed my field of studies from civil engineering to computer science at Uni and noticed the proportion of female students was at least twice as high in CS than in engineering.
And that’s a good thing!
I think the government has been pushing IT quite heavily in schools in recent years, no?
But like always with these lists. What are the definitions in each country? Maybe IT is defined broader in BE than in NL?
I can see each country having a slight variation in their descriptions and means of measuring.
Are you sure those numbers are accurate? How do they count ‘IT’
Must have changed compared to 12 years ago, where there was 1 girl in the whole first year.
As a woman studying IT in Belgium, I don’t know. In high school teachers kept trying to push me into nursing or teaching (which are also great professions, but not for me).
I think it was the I-study or Colombus test (tests that help you decide what to do after high school) we had to do that advised me to check out computer science. Then at the SIDIN (event where schools go to talk themselves up) I went to I got amazing advice from the people there, and I realized everything sounded super interesting.
There has been some propaganda many years ago to get more women to choose for IT but I can’t recall much of it
From what I know about Ughent and Uantwerpen this seems wrong, unless the last 2 years had a significant influx of female students.
Out of Physics, IT and Math, mathematics has by far the most women both in number and in percentage.