Bulgaria has the largest number of programmers in the countries of Europe, it became clear at a conference on 8 March of the Union of Transport Unions to CITUB.

Bulgaria is the number one in the number of women in the IT sector, said Deputy Minister of Social Policy Rositsa Dimitrova. According to her, 20.7 per cent of the programmers in our country are women. In comparison, they are 16% in Europe. Their share will increase because 30 percent of graduate students are female. There are two times less in the EU, the Deputy Minister said.

The difference in pay for the same job between women and men in Bulgaria is nearly 14 per cent, said Deputy Minister of Justice Desislava Achladova. The biggest problem is in the high positions where men find it difficult to give up their director positions.

Only one quarter of the transport workers are women and this needs to be changed said Věra Jourová, EU Commissioner for Justice and Equality, who also congratulated the FTTC forum. "Women have a place in the transport sector and trade unions have to constantly fight this percentage to change." Your voice and your support for this process is extremely important, "said International Trade Union Confederation President Sharon Burrow.

Bulgaria ranks fourth in Europe by the number of women in the government, said the chairman of FTTC CITUB Ekaterina Yordanova. According to European statistics, 17 percent of MPs are female. Nearly 30 per cent of the city councilors in the capital and half of the standing commissions in the Sofia municipality are run by women. "This is a good example against other European countries, but there is still a long way to go for gender equalityand especially for pay," said Ekaterina Yordanova, who is also vice president of the European and world transport federations.

Trade unionists will now be Gender Equality Teachers. This provides for a European project on greater equality for women in the transport sector, which was also the subject of the conference. The project created a manual to serve all trade unionists as a textbook for the main concepts of gender equality in their workplace.

At European level, a campaign is being launched at the Transport Women - An EU Platform for Change School, which teaches children that there are no purely male and female professions, and everyone can do what they want, it became clear at the conference.