Women & Technology: The Digital Gender Divide
Technology is the tool of freeing us all, right? From giving us access to limitless knowledge to the means of instantaneous communication and endless entertainment — how can something so freeing be oppressive to women?
This article focused on the digital gender divide in India, where only 14.9% of women use the internet. This has important implications:
This hitherto hidden face of modern patriarchy was exposed during the pandemic; especially when the vaccination drive began. Access to the internet and technological know-how became indispensable factors to ensure public health, and we observed that the number of women getting vaccinated were far less than the number of men.
For example, 17% more men than women in India are vaccinated for COVID.
And while it is true that in privileged societies and the upper classes men and women typically both use technology for all details of life, “As economic, caste and social situations change, technology and gadgets become exclusive rights of men and women are at the mercy of their husband’s or father’s….permission to gain access to them.”
And then, even in richer societies where women have more access to technology, they are still not accepted as readily into fields such as computer science. This 4 minute video gives a very interesting overview of the timeline of gender and technology:
If you don’t want to watch it, here are some interesting facts from the video:
Computer programming used to be women’s work: in 1967, Cosmopolitan magazine published an article about how there was “a whole new kind of work for women: programming!” as an alternative to secretarial work
In 1984, women pursuing degrees in computer science grew to 37% (twice today’s rate of 18%)
With the Silicon Valley “gold rush” of the 80s, pop culture portrayed male programming geniuses, and video games became toys: but they were gendered into the boys isle
Women are rejected from programming jobs as not “culture fits” because the male employees feel uncomfortable interacting with women
1 in 4 computing jobs today are held by women, and the percentage has actually fallen slightly in recent years
AND this is a costly divide:
Studies show that the bridging of this [technology] gender gap will increase the GDP of low and middle income countries by $700 billion within 5 years.
The UN’s theme for International Women’s Day 2023 is “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality,” and they shared that “women’s exclusion from the digital world” has cost low- and middle- income countries $1 trillion in GDP, and this “will grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025 without action.”
Reversing this trend will require tackling the problem of online violence, which a study of 51 countries revealed 38 per cent of women had personally experienced.