JERUSALEM, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Only 4 percent of hi-tech workers in Israel are Arab citizens, according to a new report published Wednesday by Inter-Agency Task Force.

Inter-Agency Task Force is a coalition of north American Jewish organizations learning and raising awareness about Arab citizens.

According to the report, Israeli hi-tech industry employs about 8.5 percent of the country's workers, but Arab citizens, which consist of 21 percent of Israel's population, are almost absent.

The problem is especially striking for Arab women, who constitute only 0.1 percent of the workforce, compared with 24 percent of Jewish Israeli women.

As one of the main caregivers in the family unit, the geographical distance and long hours of work in hi-tech, for example, constitute a significant barrier for Israeli Arab women.

The numbers are significantly low, although since 2008, the Jewish state's government and private initiatives have made progress in integrating the Arab population in hi-tech.

As a result, the number of Arab engineers and programmers increased from 350 in 2008, which was 1 percent of the technical workforce then, to 5,000 a decade later which accounted for 4 percent of the workforce.

At the same time, there was an increase among Arab students studying for hi-tech degrees from 2 percent in previous years to 10 percent in 2017.

In addition, there has been an increase in the number of start-ups led by Arab entrepreneurs from almost none a decade ago to 90 today, still only 2 percent of all start-ups in Israel.