whereas education and training are key to empowering women in the digital age, and thus to a society with future viability; whereas 60 % of school students in the EU never use digital equipment in their classrooms; whereas the already low share of female ICT graduates has dropped; whereas women are very underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects, and around half of female graduates do not go on to work in STEM roles; whereas in initiatives such as the EU Code Week, ICT for Better Education, the Startup Europe Leaders Club and the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs, which are aimed at further f ...[+++]ostering e-education and e-skills, women remain largely underrepresented.

While Europe has leading-edge research capabilities in key enabling technologies and can draw on a substantial knowledge base in science and engineering[11], it needs to continue to expand its science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) graduate base and find ways to maximise their effective deployment across research and business.

Europe faces a severe reduction in the interest in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) careers among young people as well as to pursue SET careers.

This will exacerbate skilled worker shortages. In many Member States, there is already a shortage of highly skilled staff, particularly researchers and science and engineering graduates, who are the foundation of technology advancement.

-a much lower proportion of researchers in the active population - 5.7% compared with 8 %, whereas the number of doctors in science and in engineering trained every year, compared with the 25-34 age group - is actually higher: 0,55% (0.49% at 25 years of age) compared with 0.41%.

[17] The UK, France, and Ireland, for example, are world leaders in the supply of science and engineering graduates; Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden in public RD spending; Sweden in business RD spending; and the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark in home internet access.