EU girls excel in digital skills, but trail in coding

Disclaimer: data for 'all individuals' were updated in the first visual and data for Malta in the second visual after publication.

In 2025, girls aged 16-19 in the EU showed higher levels of digital content creation skills than the average for the general population, according to Eurostat’s survey on the use of ICT in households and by individuals.

The majority of girls copied or moved files between folders, devices or on the cloud (79.2% of internet users), used word processing software (75.2%), created files integrating text, pictures, tables, charts, animations or sound (71.5%), edited photos, video or audio files (62.4%) or used a spreadsheet software (52.0%) in the 3 months before the survey. 

Additionally, 24.4% used advanced features of this software to organise, analyse, structure or modify data, while 10.0% wrote code in a programming language.

Source dataset: isoc_sk_cskl_i2

In all these activities, girls surpass the shares of the general population, with differences ranging from 28.5 percentage points (pp) for creating files integrating different elements to 0.4 pp for advanced spreadsheet use. 

Among the listed activities, there were 4 in which girls participated at higher rates than their male peers: photo, video or audio editing, the use of word processing software, creation of files integrating different elements and copying or moving files between folders, devices or on the cloud. 

The share of girls who code is nearly half that of boys

The share of young internet users in the EU who had written code in a programming language in the 3 months before the survey was 14.9%. While 10.0% girls coded, the share of boys coding was nearly double at 19.8%.

This gender gap was observed in all EU countries with available data, except in Cyprus, where girls led by 4.3 pp. The largest differences were recorded in Portugal (26.6 pp), Belgium (17.9 pp) and Slovakia (17.4 pp), and the smallest were in Bulgaria (0.2 pp), Latvia (1.6 pp) and Romania (2.4 pp).

Source dataset: isoc_sk_cskl_i2

This article marks the International Day of Girls in ICT, celebrated on 23 April.