Follow Us on Google
United Nations Children Fund (UNICE) and other global institutions have been told to close the gender digital divide for African girls.
President of Amaka Nweke Foundation, Amaka Nweke, made the appeal during a global online interactive session.
She expressed concern over the large gap in women and girls’ digital adoption and use, compared to men and boys in Africa.
The event, tagged: “DigitAll Day: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality,” was held to mark the 2023 International Women’s Day. Indian world class social entrepreneur and guest speaker, Kamlesh Jain and other key participants spoke on different topics such as gender equality, equity, and women empowerment.
The Foundation believes women and young persons in Africa should be engaged with the evolving world of science, technology and innovation.
Nweke, therefore, highlighted the limited sex-disaggregated data and research into adolescent girls’ access to and use of digital technology, having limited understanding of their digital realities and how best to close the gender gap.
She called on UNICEF and other global institutions to embark on mentorship that could technologically empower women and young persons in sub-Saharan Africa, close the gender digital divide for girls, support and build the evidence needed to effectively design approaches that ensure the benefits of equal digital access and use for both African girls and boys.
Nweke also cited technological innovation that is capable of disrupting an already established market by following a set of patterns that is originally focused on a niche, and with the passing of time, achieves the overtaking of the previous one, for which young persons are mostly caught up in the 21st century.
Jain, who spoke from India, stated that women were an ever-growing part of the tech landscape, but inequality in pay and opportunities persists and women’s advancement continues to shrink.
While itemising the spoken and unspoken barriers that make it difficult for girls to advance in a system, she said science, technology, engineering and mathematics opportunities begin with school and college disparities.
According to Jain, women turn away from technology career for the following reasons: nearly 30 per cent of the women leave their tech career because of family issues, 27 per cent leave because of children and care-giving reasons, while 11 per cent to 15 per kent do leave their tech jobs because of their working conditions, travel time, lack of advancement, low salary, boss and non-motivating environment.
She said women make up only 28 per cent of the workforce in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), and men vastly outnumber women majoring in most STEM fields in college.
The gender gap are particularly high in some of the fast-growing and highest-paid jobs like computer science and engineering.
