Celebrate women’s contributions to history
The other day, I lost my phone. I know you’ve all been there: a horrible, sinking feeling; the frantic search through familiar places; even denial. Fortunately, I found it after calming down and retracing my steps.
But it reminded me of the finding that most people say they would rather lose their wallet/purses than their smart phone. There’s no question that for many of us, the smart phone has become our remote control for life. We literally can’t function without it.
But yet, many people DO go through life without one. Sometimes, not willingly.
March is Women’s History Month. And amidst the usual greetings, cheers and reflections – nearly all of which were sent across social media platforms and viewed digitally -- I was also reminded that history has been very slow to progress for a shockingly large number of women across the world.
In many low- and middle-income countries, men are twice as likely to have access to the internet than women. Several years ago, an OECD report on development and gender estimated that gender-based discrimination cost the global economy a staggering $12 trillion per year.
Many of us can’t imagine living without our digital devices. So it’s no surprise that studies have established that digital access is one of the strongest empowerment tools for girls and women.
Huawei has been regularly examining our industry’s connection with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Our 2018 Huawei ICT Sustainable Development Goals Benchmark found that “gender equality” showed the fourth highest correlation with ICT infrastructure. We are the world’s biggest telecommunications infrastructure company, so this is a topic very close to our hearts.
Consider this: providing digital access to women connects them to the global community, giving them access to the educational tools and opportunities to live better, fairer lives.
We know that the dismal data can be changed. For example, in Bangladesh, which rated 78th out of 79 countries on our 2018 Global Connectivity Index, only a third of females were in the workforce. Females were also falling behind in higher education.
A project we started in 2017 in Bangladesh is bearing fruit. We teamed up with the Bangladesh government’s ICT Division with local telco Robi Axiata for a three-year training project where six buses set up with training equipment to teach digital skills aimed to reach 240,000 women across 64 of the nation’s districts.
These buses were rigged with work stations, laptops, learning software, training module, wireless connectivity, and even a standby generator. The courses included computer literacy, internet use and mobile banking.
Results are still pending in this ongoing project, but we’ve been very encouraged by what we’ve seen so far.
During this month which honors women’s contributions to history, I think about these women who are embarking on a new chapter of their own history as they enter a new world of digital discoveries. It won’t be all roses, of course.
The World Wide Web has its own dangers and pitfalls, but I believe that taking steps into this new frontier will ultimately bring benefits to Bangladesh’s women and to the nation’s long-term vitality.