Cyprus Girls Outperform Boys in Coding, Defying EU Gender Trend in Digital Skills

Cyprus is the only European Union member state where teenage girls aged 16 to 19 outperform boys in coding, according to a Eurostat report based on a 2025 survey on ICT use in households and by individuals. The report found that 6.29% of girls in Cyprus reported writing code in the three months preceding the survey, compared to just 2.02% of boys, giving girls a 4.3 percentage point lead.

This finding reverses the broader European trend, where boys typically dominate in coding activities. Across the EU, only 10% of girls reported coding in the same period, compared to 19.8% of boys, resulting in an overall youth coding rate of 14.9%. In every other EU country with available data, boys have higher coding rates than girls, with gaps exceeding 20 percentage points in some cases.

Despite the relatively low overall share of teenagers coding in Cyprus at 3.84%, the gender balance is unique within the EU. The data highlights a noteworthy exception in digital skills trends across Europe, where girls demonstrate strong proficiency in everyday digital tasks such as file management, word processing, and media editing, often exceeding both boys and the general population in these areas.

In Cyprus, girls also outperformed boys in four specific digital activities: photo, video or audio editing, word processing, integrated content creation, and file management tasks. At the EU level, however, a gender gap persists in coding, with boys maintaining a significant lead across most member states.

The Eurostat report underscores Cyprus’s distinct position in fostering greater engagement among teenage girls in technical digital activities, setting it apart from regional peers where programming remains predominantly male-dominated.