Industry stakeholders say that a greater emphasis on digital education will be crucial to closing both the skills and the gender gap in the digital sector. MEP Maria da Graça Carvalho, who spoke at an event on women in IT, stated that strengthening girls’ ICT education from a very young age would help combat inaccurate perceptions of the field as one meant for boys. She also highlighted the lack of trained teachers:
“(…) It is a fact that we don’t have enough trained teachers in the area of ICT to cultivate the taste for ICT at a very young age”. She added that it will be crucial to bring ICT to primary schools or at “a very early stage of education.”
