Despite significant efforts to eliminate the gender digital divide, it continues to grow. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates that, in 2017, the gap between the proportion of males and females using the Internet was 11.6%, up from 11% in 2013. In this context, the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development has drawn on its long-standing commitment to issues of gender and information and communication technology (ICT) to generate strong recommendations on how to close the digital gender divide through interventions in the areas of access, skills and leadership.
In order to advance these recommendations, ITU has partnered key stakeholders to launch EQUALS, the Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age. EQUALS aims to close the digital gender divide by establishing a network of organizations working to ensure that women have access to technology, gain relevant skills needed for the future of work, and rise to leadership positions in the tech sector. This initiative now has more than 50 partners from the private sector, governments, intergovernmental organization, academia and civil society.
Due the lack of sex-disaggregated data, the underlying principle of EQUALS is its evidence-based approach. By mapping initiatives that work on closing the Gender Digital Divide globally, the Action Map helps to democratize and promote information exchange, and to identify potential synergies among stakeholders to maximize impact. It aims to connect practitioners with one another and to bring more visibility to their work.
In this workshop we will present an update of the Action Map, starting off with an interactive quiz, followed by a panel discussion, where panellists will share their achievements and challenges. This workshop invites participants to eagerly engage with the panellists, to share their stories, to ask questions and to discuss the benefit of joint forces to bridge the gender digital divide in the tech sector.