2 years, 1 month ago-
It was already a dire disadvantage that girls, women, and marginalized groups are least likely to have access to technology, and as the COVID-19 pandemic has moved so many aspects of daily life online, the lack of connectivity has become even more alarming, exacerbating existing gender inequalities.
Digital gender divide is basically the inequality based on gender to provide services related stuff like a make being given some facilities related to using a specific computer and access to WiFi whereas in the same a office a female isn’t allowed of these facilities.
Due to such practises even in the 21st century, children as well as adults I feel are going to have a very bad impact on themselves by cursing why they fell into this corporate sector inequalities. I feel each and every child from child hood itself should be given values related to inequalites based on gender and providing facilities that all are eqaual and all have equal rights. Every school should have a topic related to this in value education and to be taught such terms right from that age. Our youth will lead to our growth of economy and I feel when this gender divide be flushed from the community to let women grow and excel and contribute to the betterment of the country.Phenomenal scientific progress has been made during the second half of the last century in terms of communication. With the availability of the internet, knowledge has become more accessible than ever before. It has caused massive social, productive, political, and cultural transformations, as a direct result of innovations in the Internet, mobile telephony, and social networking applications in all shapes and sizes. Society at large has started to embrace these new tools, changing forever the way we communicate and coordinating our activities, and organize social interactions. But has this technological spread been equal between the genders? Are men and women equally enjoying these technical advantages? Things at the ground level will tell that there is a huge gender divide.
It now seems that a new form of inequality has been added to all existing forms of discrimination i.e an inequality in the power to communicate and to process information digitally. Due to the general gender stereotypes, girls are not given easy access to communication devices and in India, most of the parents think that it will spoil their daughters. Even if they get access to the communication devices their access is mostly controlled and monitored, leading to a very restricted right. Even the internet is not gender equality friendly. most of the internet services are focused upon the male genders such as gaming, coding, and other fields where mails are prominent. it has very low services where the female gender can engage themselves. even if they get access to the internet they are faced with online harassment and bullying which further creates problems for them.
These present-day technologies are a very good opportunity to equip our women with skills that can help them make Independent and less dependent on the patriarchal setup. The government should utilize this technical book in improving gender equality status and bringing women to par with men.The digital gender divide can be defined as the “gender biases coded into technology products, the technology sector and digital skills education.” Technology and the internet can be a great source of opportunities and learning skills. Recent surveys have shown that girls have a lot less access to technology all over the world. To this day, girls and women often have less access to technology and the internet boys and men. In developing countries, everyone can afford these technologies but in backward countries stereotypes still prevail.
Women in numerous countries are 25% less likely than men to know how to leverage ICT for specific purposes. The Digital skills gap intersects with issues of poverty and educational access. The root cause of this digital gender divide is the patriarchal cultures preventing women and girls from developing skills. The gender gap in internet penetration is around 17 % in the Arab states and the Asia and Pacific region. The gender gap in ICT skills is as high as 25% in some ancient and middle eastern countries. If the government starts equipping girls with digital skills, they can help to boost the economy. Technology is also a power for women and girls to become activist and lead for changing the issues that affect them.In today’s modern world we find that there is an increase in the dependence on the digital world. But after the urge of covid-19, we find that the digital dependence has been increased. But is this going to give equal access? Are women going to get the right? Or again there will the divide and again they have to travel a long journey. We have already seen the women are always discriminated against in every field.
And if we further look into it we will find that only one-fifth of women are financially independent among men. Because they are denied of having better education access. But this covid-19 has changed it to worst. Now it becomes more and more difficult because of digitalization and it has increased more gap.
The basic cause of the divide in the digital world is the lack of facilities. As women are always obstructed to go out of home and have to engage in house chores they are denied of having excess. If girls use mobile they will be ill-mannered. They will do unethical things and what if they become more successful than boys? These are some of the discriminating questions told by their family members. If we see we will also find that due to their digital gender divide many women lost their jobs., undergone depression, and increased school drop-outs.
As women are economically dependent on their family they are not able to excess equal rights often we see cultural norms increases inequalities.
Only about 21% of women in India have access to mobile internet. To decrease this digital gender divide we need to fix our infrastructure as there are many villages and isolated places where there are no internet facilities. Lowering the price of technology so that financially dependent women can also access it. Spread of digital literacy so that no abusive norms in the name of technology. Creating cybersecurity so that women could feel safe while accessing the technology.Gender is an important factor affecting the use of digital technology. This is not just a matter of fairness, but also social and economic development. In addition to policy initiatives, further research that gives a clearer picture of the situation is therefore essential. There are good reasons to expect policies in this area to make different demands on men and women. More generally, women’s access to information and communication technologies is shaped by a range of factors that are significant in influencing ICT use. Some constraints arise from the location of ICT outlets concerning home and employment, from transport costs, skills development, requirements for privacy and security around the use of phones and computers, as well as social norms and expectations around the appropriate role of women in society.
Gender inequality can be a barrier to women’s full and equal participation in all areas of life. The achievement gap is rooted in gender inequity, and the digital gender divide reflects this fact. There is great potential to further reduce inequity in access to and use of information and communications technology as innovations in the form, content, awareness-raising, and delivery of digital technologies improve. The digital gender gap is intertwined with the gender gap in education, livelihoods, and empowerment. In some countries, like Rwanda and Kenya, for example, mobile phone ownership has helped reduce inequality in access to information and opportunities between men and women.
While the digital gender divide looms as a significant barrier to full financial inclusion of women in emerging markets and developing countries, it is important for policymakers, regulators, banks, and other providers of DFS to understand how different factors – including trust in institutions – affect women’s and men’s use of digital services. It is therefore important that DFS providers not only recognize this reality and actively work to address it but that they also acknowledge their role in perpetuating gender inequality and its economic costs. The best way to do so is to promote a gender-aware approach. Adopting a gender-aware approach as a core component of service design and delivery, together with clear targets for increasing female access to and engagement in digital financial services, is key if providers are to make significant contributions towards closing the digital gender divide.
Women also pay the price of a poor environment for digital financial services. As consumers, excluding women from the digital space increases their cost of managing money and makes them more susceptible to fraud and exploitation. As entrepreneurs, excluding women from a key market – the DFS sector – reduces their potential for success in running lucrative businesses. This article offers recommendations to facilitate a more equal engagement in the digital economy among men and women, including specific steps for increasing the participation of women in DFS. What emerges from our analysis is not just a picture of the gap, but also a clearer understanding of some of its causes and how it is changing over time information that will be valuable as policymakers, regulators, and international development practitioners continue their efforts to expand access to finance for women in developing countries.
In this COVID-19 pandemic situation all things has become online all the work of education everything due to which all face problem of connectivity issues. But women has to struggle more because somewhere they has less knowledge of technology and men has more knowledge about digital. In home also if there is one computer then the priority is given to men. Women should be more aware of technology because it is important in this situation to know all the things about digital technology for girls. Through this women will get more engage with technology and will get to know more about digital knowledge than women’s can also fix the problems of digital technology with their smart brains. In villages also their should be more awareness about digital because in villages also men are one who hardly know about digital world. Then means women are not at all know about it. There should foundation or organisation for such people to conduct seminar, speeches about digital technology for village people. If they get knowledge about it they can also do online studies and gain knowledge and they can also do online business. It will be very helpful for women in villages by getting knowledge about digital technology. If women get to know this earlier they has been more successful in digital world by sharing ideas and fixing problems of connectivity issues by them. In today’s generation many of the girls are aware about digital world and many of them are not. And we all know that women faces social problems they get fake calls, harassment on social media, trolling, etc. Women should get security to not face such things because of this women feel very depressed and in that also they don’t have own time to feel better because all the household work she has to do. Women should get equally Knowledge and awareness of digital world.
Digital gender divide it refers to the gap between male and female for the access to technology. In our country, men make more use of technology than women because of working or they travel and communicate more with people and most of the women are busy in the house work and because of other socio-cultural barriers, women does not get the chance to make use of technology. The report shows many women in rural areas who owns a mobile does not remember their mobile numbers and they are dependent on their man to make use of it. Also, women after the age of 18 stop getting an education and had less knowledge about technology. in a time of pandemic where almost everything became online many women lose their job because of their insufficient knowledge of how to manage things online and less hands-on technological devices. Our world is moving to digitalization and after few decades everything will be done on digital platforms. so it is very necessary to have knowledge about digital technology. And also, women should not limit themselves to just talk and use social handles, they should also need to do know how to perform a financial transaction. If women do not have financial digital knowledge men can take the wrong advantage of it. Government should make some campaigns and awareness programs. Also, infrastructural problems women are mostly in their house and there is a lot of connectivity problems in residential areas. we have to bridge the gap between digital technology. After some time how much, one is digitally literate would matter a lot. We have seen pandemic as an example, there is a lot of technological advancements are going to happen in near future, women can’t just remain backward. Internet is the most superpower; it speeds up everything we want to do. Men should help their women to learn this by showing how it is done.
DIGITAL GENDER DIVIDE
Gender gap, discrimination was and are still prevailing in many areas and in each field. It becomes difficult for women to survive each day where there is discrimination and inequality. Before there was discrimination in some, and are still but now it also has added to this list of gender divide i.e., a digital field too.
After the covid pandemic, each one of us has become reliant on digital modes for all our tasks and work and so education and work has also taken a digital mode and now this is the need of the hour that is being digitally educated and aware, but here also there are gender divide and so many have lost their opportunity to study or work further because of lack of support and discrimination between men and women.
Women in many rural or backward areas still have lack or no access to phones and digital media, because the people over there are still the same and their thoughts haven’t changed and they think providing phones to girls will make them change or make them spoiled. Many girls can’t study further after this pandemic because some didn’t have access and some don’t want to make their girl child study more because then they will have to provide amenities like boys and according to them it will be a burden.
Gender inequality was common but now digital gender inequality has taken place and we will be still lagging behind in progress and equality of opportunities because many capable and deserving girls won’t be able to move forward and so there needs to be awareness.The digital revolution ushered in an era which changed the way our world functions. The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a rapid change in functioning as global interactions, be it economic, scientific, medical, social or humanist, migrated to digital platforms. Today, with the pandemic imposing isolation and distancing, the use of technology has percolated even to the local pockets of society as the perfect alternative to direct human contact.
Gender inequality prevalent in societies has found its way to the digital arena, effecting what is widely termed a digital gender divide. The term denotes the existing gap between men and women in the usage and access to ITCs. The International Telecommunication Union found the presence of a 17% digital gender gap in 2019.As the world rapidly moves towards complete digitization, the effect of this gap gets amplified leaving half of the world population unable to contribute to socio-economic progress. This would foment an anthropological isolation of women from the progress of human civilization as their societal participation is hampered.
At the root of the problem is the belief that women are inherently unskilled at technological ventures. It draws from the essentialist perception of women as being inferior and hence incapable of navigating new and complex avenues as the ITCs. The constant discouragement is why the STEM fields are still largely male dominated. Girls showing any interest or promise in tech subjects are often nudged away towards the humanities and other ‘lighter’ fields. If not, expect backhanded compliments like, “Oh you’re good at this for a girl! It must be so hard.”
Unaffordability, lack of connectivity and low literacy rates are substantial influencers. The digital gender divide is as much an access based problem as it is of gendered discrimination. Boutheina Guermazi, director of digital development at the World Bank believes that the gap is related to the larger gender divide in society. World over, digital gender gaps remain enunciated in places where women do not have equal access to say, land, property or employment opportunities. In India, especially in rural sections where there is one handset per family, men receive priority in usage. Even if women have devices of their own, they are mostly hand me downs in damaged conditions or lack internet access facility.
The gender divide has severe social, economic and humanist implications for women. The almost spontaneous digitization of the world has the existing gender gap deny women social participation. They no longer have a role in deciding the course of humankind. With digital skills being prerequisite for a majority of jobs, women lose out on a number of employment opportunities. Not only does this stunt social progress, it also increases female employment in informal and unorganised sectors. If the digital divide is not addressed soon, it would only further the existing gender inequality in society.
Perhaps the greatest threat of digital gender divide is the monopolisation of information. In the present era information transaction largely occurs through digital platforms and women are clearly at a disadvantage. The lopsided reach of information would keep women in the dark, denying them access to medical, educational and employment facilities. The growing overreliance on the internet is a threat to India’s inclusive growth. The gap is only increasingly accentuated and will ultimately stagger any scheme or policy that governments wish to roll out in the future. Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than India’s Covid-19 vaccination drive. With an utterly digitised registration process, the vaccination drive has witnessed a clear cut gender gap with a greater number of male beneficiaries. The implementation of micro-containment zones makes Common Service Centres and NGOs redundant, leaving a large section of the female population with no access to e-registration.
Digital access is no longer a luxury. Our present life style and global functioning necessitate digital fluency and the digital gender divide is as much a global crisis. Governments worldwide need to take joint initiatives to resolve the issue by increasing widespread connectivity and making digital devices affordable. Educational institutions must expose students to female role models in the STEM fields. However, such initiatives will only bear fruit when there is an inclusive improvement in overall standard of human life.
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