The Role of Governments in Closing the Digital Gender Gap
As is often the case with long-standing social, economic and political problems, there is plenty of data and advice flying around.?In the case of the digital gender gap, this includes the comprehensive GSMA W20 policy brief from 2018.?(Yes, suppressing digital gender parity is a social, economic and political bee in the bonnet.)?It’s not a one size fits all, so individual countries need to figure out what is still causing the gap in 2019, and then define and implement the policy.
Firstly, similar to UN Women's 2018 report on gender and monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals, one of GSMA and W20’s recommendations is for governments to collect, analyze and track data disaggregated by gender (as well as age and location), on access and use of technology.
We often rely on the ITU and enthusiast press releases from global technology companies on how they have “trained†or “connected†lots of people, but we need to hear it from the demand side (as advocated by Research ICT Africa).?How fast is her Internet??Does she feel digitally literate, or is she indeed digitally fluent??Does she have a digital job and is she using e-commerce??Is she ready for when her basic manual work is automated or when her expertise gets replicated by a machine?
Leading on from this, it is government’s responsibility to get digital infrastructure right.?For example, if 5G infrastructure does not reach the rural areas adequately because of cost, women will be disproportionately affected.?Government must either own the “plumbing†or enter some sort of public private partnership (as long as it sets the rules), so as to ensure it reaches women – and anybody else who otherwise risks being left behind.?If government does not take the lead, we are leaving the door open to the private sector, which may not be concerned about areas like net neutrality or affordability or the impact of being able to employ women in digital services outside the major cities.
Take South Africa.?It was only because of the men’s World Cup that there was any significant investment in public digital infrastructure – a decade ago!?It may be starting to improve again now, but it is still expensive.?Even if a woman has access to a device, it may be poorer quality or she may only acquire it later.?Often women are less financially independent or earn less than men, so connectivity and device costs matter from a gender perspective.?Taxes on digital usage don’t help; subsidies on handsets might.
Thirdly, how do we get more women into tech – and in fact science, engineering and mathematics more broadly??After all, all STEM needs tech these days.?Society needs to keep girls in school till they are at least eighteen.?As it does, its efforts can be complemented or gently coerced by government.
Linda S Gottfredson, the American professor of education, argues that people choose their occupation through four developmental processes – ironically called stages, like the load shedding we are currently experiencing in South Africa – in their first two decades.?Notably, we “progressively eliminate the least favored vocational alternatives (circumscription), and accommodate to constraints on implementing the most favored ones (compromise).â€
First, research shows that children as young as four, but certainly between the age of 6 and 8, are already gender biased in how they think of professions.?As Professor Gottfredson puts it, “children at this [stage 2] are making simple distinctions among people and jobs, primarily on the basis of their most concrete, visible attributesâ€, the most obvious being gender, based on clothing and behaviour.
To tackle this, governments must define primary school curricula that feed into children’s natural curiosity and open their minds.?I know the continent is fraught with education challenges, from outdated curricula to inequity within countries.?However, there is a wealth of research to guide governments on evidence-based policy-making and now they just have to implement these ideas.?If they are worried about the cost of one of the most fundamental human rights, then I can assure you there is external funding.
Second, women may pigeonhole themselves into career options because of societal “norms", which put disproportionate emphasis on academic achievements and create a spectrum of what is acceptable to prestigious, with any profession above or below it as being considered out of reach, whether in terms of ability or effort.?This orientation to “social valuation†typically happens between 9-13, according to Professor Gottfredson.?“These choices may not be wise, but they tend to be permanent unless challenged in some way.â€
Maybe government can give tax incentives to firms who take on women in tech positions, or – better still – income tax breaks to women who enter tech roles.?I know that quotas and targets have their own pitfalls, but I always say governments should tax what we want less of.?So, if we want more women in tech, remove corporate and personal income taxes.
However, it’s not only about the money.?Governments should also implement social and welfare policies, as mentioned above, although especially in the oft-patriarchal emerging markets, the private sector should not wait for a paid parental leave law.
Third, we must nurture girls’ and young women’s interests, abilities and values and help match these to the myriad opportunities and potential in tech.?Women do not have to code, and when they do, they do not have to be developers - data science, machine learning (I started inputting scenarios into an artificial intelligence model recently – twenty took me about two minutes and, I imagine by three or four hundred, it would have been like cycling up Chapman’s Peak on a windy day) and cybersecurity also require coding skills and/or knowledge.?All well sought after.?For girls and young women into design, or focused on the end user experience, or passionate about content, these can all lead to careers, as can quality assurance, project management and so much more.
Do role models exist??They do, to some extent, but until we have a critical mass, government is going to have to intervene.?We must start exposing young girls to as many different careers as possible before they form rigid ideas of what is achievable and what is not.
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Government could use scholarships and bursaries to help girls in their education, especially from age 14.?Those governments that have investment funds, employment trust funds and other direct sources of finance could take a gender lens.?Governments could incentivise companies to take girls – not just their daughters, or their friend’s, but girls from the wider community – in to shadow them or have internships.
Globally, women working in science outnumber men in twenty countries:
·??????where female participation in science was actively encouraged, often in government-funded facilities, as a legacy of their membership of the Soviet Union and countries under its influence.?PPP is a modern day option, as long as government does not abdicate the responsibility of creating policies that benefit its businesses and citizens.
·??????in countries with welfare and social policies that help women in the workplace, as already touched on.?Any misguided perception that it is difficult to combine work in science with family life must be addressed with changes in policy and workplace behaviour – just like in other professions.
·??????where women are well represented in the health sector and the country has prominent medical research.?We could do with a serious uptick in healthtech, particularly in neglected diseases, or diseases with limited knowledge and growing prevalence, like dementia.?Government could drive this.
Government needs to encourage women in science to stay on for PhDs and post-doctoral research.?There is evidence that women are typically given less money in research grants, and find it?harder to obtain venture capital for science and technology start-ups.?Can government police and correct that?
Of course, we cannot ignore the role of cultural stereotypes. If my single sex education (the legacy of a woman who defied convention in Victorian England) seems to have had one useful outcome, it is that I came away with the conviction that I could do anything I wanted to.?However, I am acutely aware of the “persistent bias that women cannot do as well as men†- even in twenty first century Britain - that UNESCO has pointed to.
Yet we all know that culture adapts.?India, often considered a patriarchal society, has witnessed a substantial increase in women in engineering.?Parents often encourage their daughters into it because of good employment – and, presumably, marriage – prospects.?They perceive it as a “friendlier†area than computer science, perhaps because IT can mean unsociable hours in call centres.?Social and financial independence for women gives us louder socio-political voices.
Where misperception persists that women are not as high achievers as men, or cannot work on construction sites, in mines or on/in space, it must change from childhood.?Families, nurture your children in the same way, regardless of gender.?Construction toys for girls, and it’s fine to cry for boys.?Now we don’t need government for that, do we?
Sources
Opinion: Women don’t have to code to get into tech, it’s time to show them there are a thousand other opportunities, Lade Tawak, Business Insider by Pulse, 8 March 2019, https://www.pulse.com.gh/bi/tech/opinion-women-dont-have-to-code-to-get-into-tech-its-time-to-show-them-there-are-a/c0w5tkn
Gender equality in STEM is possible. These countries prove it, Alex Thornton, World Economic Forum, 5 March 2019, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/gender-equality-in-stem-is-possible/
Recommendations for action: Bridging the Digital Gender Gap, Claire Sibthorpe and Mariana Lopez (GSMA) and Georgina Sticco (W20), https://www.gsma.com/latinamerica/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Policy_Brief_W20_DigitalInclusion_2018.pdf
Using Gottfredson’s Theory of Circumscription and Compromise in Career Guidance and Counseling, Linda S Gottfredson, PhD, Professor, School of Education, University of Delaware, January 2004, https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2004theory.pdf, https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2004CCCentry.htm
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2 å¹´Very interesting decision making explanation, presenting a way to systematically create options for girls. I enjoyed the mention of a myriad of roles in tech and some of the cultural pressures (marriage) that hold women back - period shame is another, I understand. I look forward to seeing more progress, both in the analogue and the digital world :)
We have to get "analogue" right before we do "digital". Before my mother ordered these tables and chairs recently, these pupils used to sit on the floor.
Mary Aina, Bukola Iji, Odunayo Eweniyi, Djiba Diallo, Yemi Keri, looking forward to our session this morning at Nigeria fintech week!
Executive Director, Research ICT Africa. Adjunct Professor at University of Cape Town
5 å¹´Thanks @Artishah for article and reference to Research ICT Africa's indicator and survey work. I just wish to correct your reference to RIA reinforcing ITU indicators, but to point out that? rather we try to complement them to provide some demand-side accuracy to the supply-side data which cannot properly measure what is happening in the prepaid mobile market- certainly cannot provide accurate disaggregated gender data (which is the a basis of our disagreement with the @GSMA and @WWW Foundation on their gender data and reports. Both acknowledge that their methodologies, not being national representative cannot provide the levels of accuracy (and sometimes? misinform - like ITU data on the growing gap between men and women's use of ICT - we do not have the global data to make such claims but where we have accurate data for the Global South in After Access surveys 2017-2018 undertaken by RIA, DIRSI and LIRNEasia we do not see this trend - this also needs to be examined in terms of market maturity, levels and rate of diffusion with is different in countries with different GDPs per capita).? It is also only possible?statistically?to model ICT data that is national representative and this is what often identifies the real factor of inequality such as education and related factor of income (the structural inequalities in economy and society) that descriptive statistics often do not reveal (the reason for disparities between men and women's access and use of ICT is not determined by their sex or technology, but by the levels of education - from a policy and planning point of view this is where the intervention needs to occur). The broader point, however, is that indicator/statistical discussions although referenced as gender discussions are really only measured sex disparities, and are generally only concerned with women (as if they were a homogenous group).? Lack of access and use of the Internet is an issue of poverty and access to resources. From a purely connectivity perspective, poor men and women may have more in common that women across different income levels.? Further gender is about power relations and society and should not be even confined to the binaries of men and women. While having numbers to highlight issues for policymakers can be instrumentally effective, understanding the intersectional dimensions of identity, sexuality, class, location and culture are better researched and understood through qualitative research of which RIA undertakes a considerable amount to try and answer the questions that the quantitive data cannot, and to identify emerging issues that it may be useful to quantify to complement or assess qualitative insights.? What is unfortunate from the point of view of building an evidence base for policy is that there are also hierarchies of research and funding with increased international aid and donor funding shifting from public institutions such as universities and non-profit thinktanks to support the undertaking of research by arguably the wealthiest industry association in the world with overt interests in research outcomes and to famous name foundations from North whose? research is primarily intended for short term lobbying of advocacy and which has some times been counterproductive in terms of longer-term more holistic positive outcomes.? This would be fine if African states had the institutional capacity and resources to undertake their own research and develop organic, contextualised local solutions for policy makers but in most countries, even wealthier African states, like South Africa, and in the absence of their own policies and framework, these well-marketed reports and underlying principles become their default references.
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5 å¹´I am personally very passionate about gender equality. This article was very articulate and informative. The arguments were well structured. Most importantly it provided some suggestions on how government can shoulder the responsibility of bridging the digital gender gap. Thanks for sharing!