BDT Director Doreen Bogdan-Martin joined a distinguished group of global leaders including UN DSG Amina Mohammed, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, UNECE Executive Secretary Olga Algayerova, Deputy Executive Director of UN Women, Åsa Regnér, Lilja Alfredsdóttir, Minister of Education, Science and Culture of Iceland, and a host of other high-level dignitaries for an important global forum around digital opportunity for women, hosted by Israel's International Agency for Development Cooperation and the Golda Meir MASHAV Carmel International Training Center.
The forum noted with concern that The COVID-19 pandemic is amplifying gender inequalities in every sphere, including economic, health, security, social protection, and development. Held over two days, the programme of high-level discussions sought to analyze and review the current impact COVID-19 is having on women and girls, and to highlight global and national strategic plans and innovative measures to respond to these challenges. Topics under discussion included: social and economic distress, reduced access to social protection, gender-based violence, disruption in education, unequal access to technology and the digital gender divide.
Contributing to Panel 4: Building Resilience through Cooperation and Partnerships, Ms Bogdan-Martin warned of the growing risks of the digital gender divide. Already, 52% of women remain totally offline, compared with 42% of men. “We know that this dispiriting figure does not paint a true picture," she said, “because in the world's poorest nations, women's access to technology is much more limited. A recent report by our EQUALS Access Coalition indicates that in the world's Least Developed Countries woman are 33% less likely to have internet access than their male counterparts.
She went on to cite research showing that the digital gender gap is widening in the very parts of the world that could benefit most from better connectivity. The GSMA reports that in low- and middle-income countries over 300 million fewer women than men access the internet via a mobile phone, with women also 20% less likely than men to own their own smartphone.
Emphasizing that collaboration will be key to closing the digital gender divide, Ms Bogdan-Martin noted that ITU's consensus-focused culture has been focused on finding ways for all stakeholders to work together holistically to drive technological progress, through collaborative work to develop global technical standards; through consensus on ways to equitably share precious resources like the radiofrequency spectrum; and through multi-stakeholder connectivity and capacity-building partnerships aimed at getting communities connected.
She cited several current initiatives designed to empower women and girls, including the EQUALS Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age, which now has over 100 committed partners across 115 countries.
“Through this successful multi-stakeholder partnership, over 52,000 women and girls have already received digital skills training and mentoring, and 146 research projects have been undertaken in countries around the world to better understand the gender digital divide and identify potential effective remedies appropriate to local environments," said Ms Bogdan-Martin.
Other activities highlighted were the annual Girls in ICT Day celebrations, which have now reached over 360,000 girls and young women through more than 11,000 events; the EQUALS in Tech Awards rewarding ground-breaking work in promoting gender equality in digital access, skills, leadership and research; the new Girls Can Code' programme, launched last year and already rolled out in Africa and Latin America, with other regions to follow, and the new Giga partnership with UNICEF and others which seeks to connect every school in the world to the power of the internet, and every child to information, opportunity and choice.
“For girls, particularly in remote and rural communities, the acquisition of digital skills and the ability to access a whole world of educational resources online could be a true life-changer. And for local women, Giga could also represent a new world of opportunity, because in the light of the COVID pandemic we are broadening our vision to ensure that connected schools can also serve as community hubs for internet access and training. Imagine what that might mean to millions of house-bound women who currently lack access to a connected device," Ms Bogdan-Martin said.
