It is well known that women around the world still face challenges due to unequal income, unequal rights and generally are being discouraged to participate in fields that are considered only suitable for men.
This is not the case of Romania. As statistics from last year show, Romania has the lowest gender pay gap in Europe. A recent article from zdnet.com, a website that focuses on technology has demonstrated that Romanian women, as well as Bulgarian women, are leading in software engineering compared to women in other countries.
But why Romanian women enter the technology field?
According to the article, women in Romania, as well as Bulgaria, are not discouraged at all to enter a field like engineering or programming. zdnet. com gives the example of Iva Kaneva who decided at the early age of 12 to study programming and to become a NASA engineer. She was not discouraged by parents to do so. Although mostly boys studied it in school, her parents, both engineers have told her to follow her passion.
According to statistics, in Europe Bulgaria has the highest proportion of women working in tech 27.7%, while Romania comes very close to a 27.2 %. The countries that follow are Latvia, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania with 20 percent.
However, countries like UK, Germany, France, and Spain only have 16.1 %.
Interviewed by zdnet.com, Kaneva stated that women were encouraged to enter science occupations in the communist regime, as they needed all the workforce they could get. Therefore women even entered occupations in the field of mechanical repairs and tool making. As well, the pay was equal. This means ” This laid the foundation for today’s large proportion of girls in tech.”
Most people that work in tech in Romania and Bulgaria they are working in outsourcing for different companies from western Europe.
Women and men are equal in the field of economics and science. In Romania, 49 percent of women work in the economy field and also 50% of women are found in management positions compared to 50 % of men.
Women were also praised for having very good tech skills. This does not seem to be a temporary phenomenon as the number of women in these fields is even increasing every year. For example, in Romania women are 29.3 % of the computer-science students.
source: zdnet.com
source photo: flickr
positivenewsromania.com 
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