BDT Director Doreen Bogdan-Martin delivered a keynote address to the 12th edition of the South School on Internet Governance on “The gender gap in Internet and ICT: present situation and future perspectives". The event was held in in partnership with ARSENIG & University of Buenos Aires.
The South School of Internet Governance aims “to get young students and professionals from different disciplines in Latin America and the Caribbean to become involved in the Internet Governance debate and to understand its importance in the future of the Internet and in the development of the region."
Describing ITU's focus on inclusive connectivity, Ms Bogdan-Martin emphasized technology and gender issues. Right now, the power and transformational potential of connectivity is not equally distributed, she explained. “As a global average, 52% of women are offline, compared with 42% of men. But we know that even this depressing figure does not paint a true picture, because in the world's poorest nations, women's access to technology is much more limited," she said. She went on to congratulate Latin America as the only continent to have achieved gender parity in ICT access, according to ITU data.
Noting that digital technologies can be a key driver of development, Ms Bogdan-Martin highlighted various ITU initiatives that strive to empower girls and women with meaningful access to ICTs.
One example is the EQUALS Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age, which she co-founded in 2016 with UN Women, the International Trade Centre, the GSMA, and UN University. Through this multi-stakeholder cooperation platform, “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," she noted.
Through the “Girls Can Code" programme, ITU focuses on building professional tech skills for young women. Workshops have been held in Africa and the Americas, and will be rolled out to other regions including the Caribbean in the coming months.
In addition, ITU's new Giga partnership with UNICEF and others, aims to connect every school in the world to the power of the internet. Ms Bogdan-Martin emphasized the enormous potential this initiative has for young girls, by providing them with digital skills and the ability to access a whole world of educational resources online. In the wake of the COVID pandemic, the initiative also aims to ensure that connected schools can also serve as community hubs for internet access and training. This could be life-changing for house-bound local women who currently lack access to a connected device.
When asked about her message to young women in the Latin American region, Ms Bogdan-Martin shared her belief that getting “tech qualifications is one of the very best choices a young girl or woman can make", given the transformative potential of digital technologies for personal, social and economic development.
In order to achieve gender-balanced teams in the workplace, Ms Bogdan-Martin brought attention to the need to overturn the old stereotype “based on a fundamental misinterpretation of data, several decades ago… that the tech sector is the natural province of 'nerdy' men." She encouraged all organizations, public and private, to support the EQUALS Leadership Coalition and make an active effort to redress the gender imbalance. The efforts of every organization that does this “will be ultimately reflected in a stronger balance sheet and a more sustainable long-term business model."
