Especies del Distrito Metropolitano de Quito

The role of gender in relation to digital skills is a central theme particularly in the third article (Differences between the genders in ICT skills for Finnish upper comprehensive school students: Does gender matter?). The article analyses the data concerning only the lower secondary education students in the sample II, applying the renewed ICT Skill Test. The results of this article shows that there is only a small, but statistically significant difference between the genders, in favour of female students, when analysing students' performance in the ICT Skill Test at the total score level. A more detailed item-level analysis, however, reveals significant differences between the genders in digital skills according to the subject matter of the test item (see table 1 of article III) as male students tend to get higher scores from more technical-oriented items than females, and female students score higher in school work -oriented and social interaction -related items than male students. Therefore, the differences in digital skills between genders tend to relate to the subject matter of the test, implying that these differences are rooted in more profound gendered preferences and attitudes toward technology.

The first article (Performance-based testing for ICT skills assessing: a case study of students and teachers’ ICT skills in Finnish schools), based on sample I (both lower and upper secondary school students), where gender differences are just one of the topics to be considered, confirms the above-mentioned results. The results of this article, based on the version of the ICT skill test emphasising computer literacy at the expense of wider digital skills, show that the overall

performance of male students is slightly better than that of female students (table 3 of article I). However, the more substantial gender divide appears in the advanced and professional technical skills, in which male students clearly outperform the female students. These results are consistent with the results of the third article, as presented in the previous paragraph, and with the traditional understanding of males being more technically-oriented than females. However, along with this, the results of the first article emphasises that the more technical the tasks, the smaller the number of students who master them and the greater the differences between the genders became. Thus, male students clearly dominate technical skills, but this dominance in the most technical tasks is in fact caused by a relatively small group of technically competent males.

The fifth article (Digital abilities and ICT intentions of future labor market entrants in Finland) focusing on the upper secondary school students in sample II and applying the renewed ICT Skill Test, confirms (table 2 of article V) that the medium-related digital skills, necessitating abilities to use the functionalities of the devices, software and the Internet, and especially programming skills, consisting of logical reasoning, web programming and knowledge of databases, tend to be especially male-dominated areas of expertise. In the fifth article, gender also stands out as an influential factor for students’ intentions to apply to study or work in the ICT field in the future (table 4 of article V), leading to the assumption that the majority of the possible future ICT applicants will continue to be consist of mainly male students in the future.

The second article, Information skills of Finnish basic and secondary education students: The role of age, gender, education level, self-efficacy and technology usage, applies the original ICT Skill Test examining information skills and the digital technology usage habits of participants from both lower and upper secondary schools. Based on the results of this article, gender serves as moderator variable, as both the skills and the usage of digital technology between males and females are different in terms of the areas of expertise and the types of usage. The results (see table 4 of article II) shows that social use is the most frequent type of digital usage among both genders, followed by personal use. Social use includes the usage related to communication, maintaining social relationships, networking, sharing one’s own digital content in networking sites and playing multiplayer games. Personal use, instead, includes individual game playing and the usage of different kind of digital entertainment services. The results highlight the importance of social relations and recreational leisure in the daily, digitalised life of young people in Finland. Economic use, including public and commercial services and learning- and information-oriented usage, is far less frequent among

young Finns than social use and personal use. Cultural use, such as creating one’s own digital content and sharing digital contents on different kinds of online services, is the least frequently cultivated type of usage. The results show that male students are more active in economic use and personal use than female students, whereas female students are more active in cultural use compared to males. Moreover, the results of the second article show that male students are more versatile users of digital technology than female students. However, the distribution among male students is wider than among female students as both the most restricted and the most diverse users of digital technology are male students.

In summary, gender appears as a social category that produces differences in young people's digital engagement. Both the digital skills of the students and their digital usage differ between male and female students especially with regard to their type and domain, rather than in terms of quantity of usage or level of skills. This fact indicates that gender differences in digital engagement are largely domain-specific and related to gendered preferences and interests, in other words tendencies towards the ways of experiencing digital technology and available digital afforcances. Because the patterns of these preferences appear clearly in the data concerning lower and upper secondary school students, they are most likely to develop during the early years of childhood and youth.