Africa on Wednesday, 08 March, 2023, joined the rest of the world to observe the 2023 International Women’s Day (IWD).
Development Diaries reports that the United Nations (UN) observed the 2023 IWD under the theme ‘DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality’.
The theme, according to the UN, was chosen to recognise and celebrate the women and girls who are championing the advancement of transformative technology and digital education.
SDG Five: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
The observance also set out to explore the impact of the digital gender gap on widening economic and social inequalities, and the importance of protecting the rights of women and girls in digital spaces and addressing online and ICT-facilitated gender-based violence.
The UN noted that a persistent gender gap in digital access has kept women from unlocking the full potential of technology.
The case in Africa
A 2020 report by Project Syndicate revealed that in sub-Saharan Africa, the overall female labour-force participation rate was 61 percent, yet women constituted only 30 percent of professionals in the tech industry.
The report also stated that although internet usage in Africa was growing at the world’s fastest rate, the digital gender gap had widened since 2013, as a quarter fewer women than men were using the net.
Recent data from World Bank shows that sub-Saharan Africa has among the widest gender gaps in mobile internet use in the world, with over 190 million women not using mobile internet services (a 37 percent gender gap).
According to the bank, a 2018 survey across 16 countries in eastern and southern Africa found equally low levels of access to the internet on their phones by female (48 percent) and male (50 percent) respondents.
It goes further to say that in Kenya, only ten percent of women used a mobile phone to get information on products and services compared to 22 percent of men; and in Uganda, only 13 percent of women used the internet compared to 24 percent of men.
Also, in the business world, when women who own small businesses cannot assess technology, they fail to reach their economic potential.
For example, dressmakers or hairdressers suffer when they cannot advertise online let alone use technological tools to monitor, measure, and optimise their operations. Low female and financial capacity have been identified as factors responsible for this obvious gap.
STEM
In Africa, women and girls’ underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is also a major barrier to their participation in tech design and governance.
There should be more initiatives aimed at enabling girls and women to enter the STEM fields in order to achieve the desired change.
If women are unable to access the internet, they are unable to develop the necessary digital skills to engage in digital spaces. This also diminishes their opportunities to pursue careers in STEM-related fields.
Action points
In recognition of this digital gender gap, UN Women has called on governments, activists and the private sector alike to power on in their efforts to make the digital world safer, more inclusive and more equitable.
Similarly, the African Union (AU) Commission called for critical ways to bridge the gender digital divide in Africa.
Development Diaries, therefore, calls on African governments to create technology initiatives aimed at primary and secondary school students, with a special focus on girl students so that they are not left behind.
Also, we call for the creation of computer literacy programmes, particularly targeting women from rural areas. As a way to support this, provisions should be made towards improving access to information and communications technologies (ICT), especially internet-enabled mobile phones.
Photo source: WOCinTech Chat
