Women are fighting for digital equality

 Lockdown has forced people to spend the past year and more learning, working and socializing online - but in many countries women are still missing.

According to the latest figures from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations, men in almost every region of the world are less likely than men to have access to the Internet.

The so-called digital sex gap is most noticeable in Africa, where the ITU estimates that 3% of men have Internet access but only 20% of women.

More importantly, this division has widened in Africa since 2013.

"If you don't have digital skills, you'll be left behind," said Regina Hanu, founder of Soronko Academy, a technical school for women and girls in Ghana.

“Before Kovid, if we invited people to sign up, we would have 100 or 200 women,” she said.

"Since Kovid, more than 2,000 of our women have signed up.

"Kovid has made people realize that if you don't have digital skills, you're going to fall behind."

Regina says many Ghanaian girls cannot even touch the computer until they go to school or family members can block their internet access.

And in an age of social distance, it is difficult to communicate with people who have no experience or lack of experience in technologies. Without a computer or high-end smartphone, or for those for whom data consumption is an issue, video calls are not possible.

Regina has looked for solutions instead of simple solutions.

"We used WhatsApp and Telegram check. We called to check in and find out what they were doing."

However, it was not possible to reach everyone using this method, and he was satisfied that simplifying the lockdown meant they could "return in person."

Neutral gender

Lack of digital skills can deprive women of healthcare, education, work and financial freedom.

Bouthina Germaji, the World Bank's director of digital development, says it's not easy to explain why the digital gender gap is wider in certain places than in other places. But social, cultural, and financial factors all seem to work.

“I think it’s linked to a larger gender divide,” he says. "In areas where women do not have equal rights to land ownership, for example, or equal rights to the job market - when we add a digital dimension, these areas will obviously be deeper than other regions because they have equal rights."

And he says the Covid situation was “not gender-neutral,” making some women’s lives more difficult.