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WHAT's NEXT: Closing the Gender Digital Divide

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WHAT's NEXT: Closing the Gender Digital Divide GLOBAL BROADBAND AND INNOVATIONS ALLIANCE WHAT’S NEXT September 2020 WHAT’S NEXT: Closing the Gender Digital Divide By S. Revi Sterling, Director, USAID W-GDP WomenConnect Challenge “Women represent the main economic force of technology access and use, they will be further in most developing countries. As economies marginalized. become more and more information-driven… This inequality has always been a concern and has the involvement of women in the Information fueled gender digital divide efforts. However, there are Society on an equal footing with men will two major factors that continue to unwittingly perpetuate directly contribute to improving the livelihood this gender gap, in addition to the well-documented of people, making it more sustainable and traditional barriers to women’s ICT access and use. thereby promoting the social and economic First, most efforts to bring women online are failures, advancement of societies.”1 which include the many ICT training and digital literacy programs that are popular with private sector technology WOMEN & THE WEB ALLIANCE LEGACY companies, foundations, and development agencies. Over 60 years of development research and These trainings are easy to produce, and the beneficiaries programming has unequivocally demonstrated that are easy to count. They also push a software and women’s advancement is key to development. Over hardware agenda. Rarely do these trainings produce twenty years of information and communication lasting change in women’s lives because they do not technology (ICT) and development work has confirmed address women’s local information needs, livelihood that the gender digital divide is real and worsening in support, or offer relevant and compelling experiences. many regions, although no one debates the potential of UN’s EQUALS Program (The Global Partnership for information technology to empower women. Thus, an Gender Equality in the Digital Age) and others have imbalanced equation persists, and digital development made this point – there is a mismatch between skills remains unequal development: training and capacity, job availability, and culturally- appropriate approaches, even with an eye on culturally- • Women’s advancement is key to poverty alleviation specific content as offered on platforms such as World in all forms. Pulse. The Women and the Web Alliance (WTWA) • Digital technology can be a powerful tool in poverty content promoted women’s mobilization and activism, alleviation. which was a world away from the realities of most • Women do not have the same opportunities to use Nigerian and Kenyan participants, who live on under a digital technology as men do for a variety of cultural dollar a day and for whom activism is a luxury for those and socioeconomic reasons. with more resources. Often funded by corporate social • If women continue to be excluded from the benefits responsibility (CSR) divisions of major organizations, 1 Primo, N. (2003). Gender issues in the information society. Paris, France: UNESCO Global Broadband & Innovations Alliance | 1 these kinds of trainings look effective on paper but have little bearing on actual development, due to a lack of understanding of the participant base and an absence of future opportunities. Even in programs where internships and employment opportunities are included, women often are prohibited by their families from working outside of the house or community or find a new level of untenable sexism and gender gaps in their new positions. It is not a coincidence that the internet boasts hundreds of women & technology training program announcements but almost zero program assessments or outcomes data. Second, the wholesale movement of development cultural nuances are often lost on development workers sectors to digital solutions further marginalizes millions on trips to the field, but they must inform policy and of women. While this may seem ironic given the reach programming decisions. and popularity of mobile phones and the positive rhetoric about women and the internet, there is a significant If development professionals are mostly witnessing mobile phone ownership gap between the genders women of status using technology – even in the most and a much more pronounced mobile internet use gap. remote or challenged environments – how does the Common statistics put the mobile internet gender gap at sector reach the women who comprise the gender 30% in developing countries writ large, with gaps over digital divide? This was the main question addressed 50% in many countries. As that is an average of rural by the Women and the Web Alliance. If digital literacy and urban women across all socioeconomic strata, it is programs aren’t the answer and are missing a huge not a surprise that in many places where development swath of those who would benefit most from accurate and women’s empowerment are most needed are the development information and increased skills, what is same ones where women have almost no access to the the correct approach? This question led to a level of internet. Local fatwas prohibit women’s mobile phone reflection in which USAID had not previously engaged use across the Sahel, while hundreds of villages across regarding gender and technology. Spurred on by both northern India have banned unmarried women’s mobile a significant amount of research and internal lobbying, phone use in order to preserve the patriarchal social the Center for Digital Development in the Global order. When development organizations publish digital Development Lab and the Office of Gender Equality & strategies and adopt mobile-based agriculture and Women’s Empowerment decided to pursue a new set of health programming, the women who would usually meet interventions focused on the root causes of the gender with the farm extension worker or the community health digital divide rather than its symptoms. This gave rise worker for critical information no longer have access to to the USAID WomenConnect Challenge, which was these resources. These are some of the negative aspects a direct response to the general shortcomings of the of going digital – we do not see who is being left behind Women and the Web Alliance. in our quest for technical scale and sustainability. When women do have smartphones, or even feature phones USAID WOMENCONNECT CHALLENGE in many rural communities, the likelihood is high that they The Women and the Web Alliance program had hold an elevated position in that community and are not long flagged the flaws inherent in technology training representative of most women. As an outsider, these programs for women and had pushed for funding Global Broadband & Innovations Alliance | 2 to address the gender dynamics and conditions in and often perpetuated by women themselves, it is not communities where the gender digital divide is the surprising that women blame these external factors. greatest. With funding first from the Office of Gender They are also the easiest to address. A company can Equality & Women’s Empowerment and then the heavily subsidize handset or connectivity costs, and an government-wide Women’s Global Development and internet café can offer free women’s days. A program Prosperity Initiative (W-GDP), the WomenConnect like WTWA can offer skills, much as other companies Challenge became the only major gender and do. Focusing on the symptoms and manifestations technology program designed to identify, research, and of harmful social norms is only a bandage. The only prove the viability and sustainability of interventions that effective approaches meet women where they are in challenge the social norms that claim that technology and terms of access, cultural appropriateness, literacy and the internet are appropriate for women. user interfaces, hardware and network availability, and perceived benefit of being online. The internet is a huge risk to the traditional social order, and as more societies undergo economic and social While social norms are eschewed by funders and stressors, they revert to reactionary gender roles. partners for being difficult to identify, harder to address, Conservative communities the world over have declared and outside of the traditional domain and comfort internet use immoral for women, resulting in honor killings zone of technology interventions, the WomenConnect of women who use social media to women being jailed Challenge and its various iterations have demonstrated for possessing a mobile phone. From the Wall Street significant, sustainable models that agencies and Journal to academic conferences, these social norms organizations would be remiss to ignore. Indeed, in are well-documented but difficult to address, as they some communities, these social norms-targeting programs run deep and unchallenged. Thus, it is necessary to may be the only viable pathway to closing the gender understand the conditions under which women can use digital divide. The common characteristic across the technology, if at all. As women have less agency, less current 12 programs include identifying the gating purchasing power, and lower literacy and digital literacy barriers to women’s technology access and use, creating levels, they have less opportunities to challenge the status compelling cases to use the internet, and then obtaining quo. It is important to remember that the real reason not just permission but explicit enthusiasm from those who digital development efforts cannot reach the last several had previously disallowed or discouraged women’s hundreds of millions of women comes down to fact
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