COVID-19: a word we all know. A word that first appeared in 2019 and defined the year 2020. Along with it came the economic, social and environmental consequences - for both developed and developing countries - and the realisation that our lives today could no longer be without digital technology. Before COVID-19, we were already interconnected. But today, in times of containment, certain spheres of our lives function through digital means alone. Teleworking has become the norm for certain professions. Skype is substituted in for family gatherings. And Zoom, now replaces meetings between friends on terrace cafés.
However, even if digitalisation is now part of all our lives, if viewed through a gendered lens, it is interesting to underline that digitalisation does not impact men and women in the same way.
Digitalisation: a blessing for women?
For some, digitalisation can be seen as a kind of blessing for women, as it improves their living conditions in many ways.
Digital technologies can reduce gender gaps in labour force participation by making work arrangements more flexible, connecting women to work, and generating new opportunities in online work, e-commerce, and the sharing economy. For example, digitalisation could offer women who wish to balance work and family life, a real opportunity to work from home with flexible hours. WDR (2016) noticed that of the global online workers on the Elance freelancing platform(part of Upwork) 44%are women compared to an average of 25%in the nonagricultural economy globally.
What’s more is that technology-driven shifts in skills demand can reduce wage gaps, especially among the higher-skilled. Using data from West Germany, Black and Spitz-Oener (2007) explain that technological change could reduce gender pay gaps by increasing demand for high-skilled women. Despite this advantage, the counterparty of bridging the gender wage gap is the widening of a polarisation in employment between low and high skilled women workers and thereby increasing socio-economic inequalities.
Technology can also impact women’s political voice. Social media is an additional outlet for women to participate in public discussions and voice their opinions. Take for example, ‘My Dress, My Choice’ in Kenya, a social media movement against female violence that mobilised thousands of Kenyans to march in street protests, eventually led to changes in relevant laws (Santos and Seol, 2015).
Beyond political empowerment, digitalisation can also economically, financially and socially empower women. Technology can help improve women’s access and accumulation of productive assets. For instance, the digitalisation of land registries can increase women's economic power. In Rwanda, the Land Tenure Regularization Programme demarcated and digitised 10 million plots. Households that registered their land were more likely to invest in it, and this effect was twice as strong for female-headed households (Ali, Deininger, and Goldstein 2014). Digital payments and mobile money could also help shift economic decision making in favor of women. By being more easily concealed by the recipient than cash, digital payments enable women to better control over economic resources. In Niger, greater privacy and control of mobile transfers, compared to manual cash transfers, shifted intrahousehold bargaining power in favor of women (Aker, Boumnijel, McClelland, Tierney, 2016).
At first glance, digitalisation could represent a promised land full of opportunities for women, but can they really have access to it?
Women away from digitalisation
Digitalisation can be a potential blessing for women, if and only they can benefit from it. Yet, women are currently experiencing a digital divide. Men and women do not have the same access to digital technologies. Women are less likely than men to use, own or have access to digital technologies (WDR, 2016). The ‘Women and the Web’ Report (Intel and Dalberg, 2013) found that the gender gap in technology soars to nearly 45% in Sub-Saharan Africa. This gap in technology use could partly reflect traditional socio-cultural norms according to which a lack of control over the use of the technology can prevent women from using it. Gender norms are still alive online. One in five women in India and Egypt believe the Internet is not ‘appropriate’ for them (Intel and Dalberg, 2013).
The underrepresentation of women in ICT fields also reflects the digital divide they experienced. Based on STEP household surveys, WDR (2016) concluded that men are 2.7 times more likely than women to work in the ICT sector and 7.6 times more likely to be in ICT occupations. This underrepresentation partly reflects women’s low participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, itself a product of early gender-based biases in formal and informal education.
Is digitalisation really all pink for women?
Even if the digital divide narrowed and women could access its benefits, digitalisation does not come without any disadvantages for women: poor pay, lack of career prospects, of security and protection (Survey of online workers at microworkers.com from WDR (2016)). Even worse, it seems that women with children are not necessarily among the first recipients of digital technology Klonner and Nolen (2010). In rural South Africa, the roll-out of mobile phone networks increased employment among women, but only for those who did not have significant family responsibilities, notably due to the prevalence of certain so-cultural norms.
Moreover, even if digitalisation offers inclusion and empowerment opportunities, digital technologies, especially algorithms used in social media, can help perpetuate racist and sexist attitudes, but in an invisible and, insidious way (Hao, 2019). They can also make it easier for employers to screen employees for racist and sexist reasons.
Conclusions
Gains from digitalisation are not automatic for women. They need to be complemented with appropriate policies that address the underlying barriers to women’s employment and access to technology. What could we, then, concretely do? In addition to promoting equal access to decent jobs, women should be encouraged to enter into ICT professions and companies. Developed welcoming environments for women could also increase the available workforce in ICT fields.
Finally, addressing gender stereotypes in school and at home is another policy that requires attention. Girls and women should be encouraged to believe that they have the required ability for STEM and that significant opportunities will emerge for them. This could be achieved by providing girls with relevant role models, targeting girls for recruitment into the STEM fields early in their education and establishing targets and incentives for recruitment, retention, and graduation of women in STEM field. All these policies could be even more effective if they are gender-informed, including by having women participate in the design of these interventions.
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