The UOC offers women five grants for digital training

To encourage women to train in a largely male-dominated sector, the UOC is offering five grants for general and specialist courses in digital fields. In doing so, the University is joining the Barcelona Digital Talent campaign to foster digital training, promoted by Mobile World Capital Barcelona, CTecno, Barcelona Tech City, the 22@Network, Foment del Treball, Barcelona Global, Barcelona City Council and the Government of Catalonia. A total of 822 grants are being offered at the various universities and training centres taking part in the initiative.

Barcelona Digital Talent has launched a campaign to respond to the economic crisis resulting from the coronavirus and help professionals to obtain theoretical and practical retraining for a sector with zero unemployment and relatively stable job prospects.

There continues to be a very high demand for professionals in the digital sector, as detailed in the latest report from Digital Talent Overview 2020, even though there is still a large talent gap: in Barcelona in the last two years, job offers in the digital sector have shot up by 80%, while the number of digital professionals has only grown by 23%.

Another important point is the gender bias in these professions, especially in the area of technology. In fact, women with the same training and experience as men see higher rates of unemployment and temporary contracts. This can be seen in a study carried out by the UOC and the UB, with support from RecerCaixa, which shows that for every woman working in the ICT sector there are 3.5 men. Only 23.8% of people employed in this sector are women. In the 31-45 age group, for every 5.3 men in active employment there are only two women.

5,000 grants from the Government of Catalonia

Barcelona Digital Talent will allocate the 822 grants offered by private centres and the 398 grants from public centres, with a value of 1,351,094 euros, for 90 intensive courses in 20 universities and training centres. At the same time, the Catalan Ministry for Digital Policy and Public Administration is providing 5,000 grants for online intensive digital training courses.