TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Whelan, Adele
AU  - Brosnan, Luke
AU  - McGuinness, Seamus
        TI  - The Gender Gap in Digital Skills at Work
        PY  - 2026/May/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18675
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp18675
        AB  - We analyse the gender gap in digital skills use at work across Europe. We find a substantial gap, with women significantly less likely to perform advanced digital tasks. A raw gender gap of around 16 percentage points is observed, of which only 30 per cent is attributable to observable factors. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions using unconditional decile regressions reveal that the gap is most pronounced at the upper end of the digital intensity distribution, where women are substantially underrepresented. The explained component of the gender digital skills gap increases with digital task intensity, suggesting that access to highly digital jobs is shaped by gendered educational and occupational sorting. However, persistent unexplained gaps from intermediate levels indicate potential structural, cultural, or other organisational barriers at play. Furthermore, we find that younger women already face larger gaps in advanced digital skill use than older workers, suggesting that it is not a legacy issue.
        KW  - digitalisation
KW  - digital skills gap
KW  - gender inequality
KW  - labour markets
KW  - technological change
KW  - task-based analysis
KW  - decomposition analysis
KW  - inclusive growth
        ER  -