The number of women working as Internet networking engineers is set to double by 2004, according to a new study for Cisco Systems by international Internet consultants IDC.
Although almost 94,000 women in Western Europe will be working as networking engineers by 2004, they will still only represent 7.3 per cent of the Internet industry.
In the first calculation of the number of women who make Internet systems work, the study reveals that at the end of 2000, 5.6 per cent of networking engineers were female.
Although the number of women in the industry will double in absolute numbers within five years, so will the number of men.
This will not be enough to offset the networking skills shortage, which is expected to exceed 500,000 in Western Europe by 2004.
According to IDC, one way to help offset this shortage is to encourage more women to enter the profession.
But research suggests women are turning away from careers in the Internet networking industry because of its "nerdy" image, a lack of strong female role models and a perception women are less able to do technical tasks than men.
The research concludes the key to ensuring a future flow of skilled women is through education and that government and industry must work together to encourage females to consider networking as a career.