A $1 Trillion Opportunity

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as people come in we’ll just go aheadand do a quick introduction Welcome toour webinar uh women girls and digitalinclusion we are very excited to behaving a conversation about theimportance of digital equity and digitalinclusion but specifically looking ateconomic opportunities and access forwomen and girls around the world and wehave an amazing conversation with someexperts that are not only experts in thetopic itself but are also Frontlinepractitioners in real time creatingsolutions that the world desperatelyneeds to achieve gender parity andgender equity in the digital landscapeso we’re going to go ahead and divestraight on in the agenda for today’sconversation is we’re going to start offwith giving you an overall understandingof the global landscape around digitaland women’s inclusion specificallyaround the digital and economic equitythen we’re going to unpack aconversation around closing the genderdigital divide what does that actuallymean what resources collaboration andideas does it take to actually helpcreate progress on this topic and thenwe’re going to close out with a q a sofor anyone who’s attending you can usethe chat box there’s a q a feature andsend us your messages and we’ll try toeither address them in real time andleave them throughout the conversationor we’ll address them at the very endeither in writing or verballyso really quick uh overviewum my name is hazami bermata and I’llintroduce myself more formally in just amoment but I’m the director of thedigital Equity accelerator which is acollaboration between the AspenInstitute and HPum we’ve launched a digital Equityaccelerator in 2002 with the goal ofinvesting into non-profit organizationsthat were really helping close thedigital divide in their communities butmore importantly looking at digitalinclusion as a tool to achieve gendersocial and economic Justice in theircommunities around the pillars of genderjustice including of marginalizedcommunities that means elderlypopulation communities with disabilitiesand other historically marginalizedcommunities so we are very proud to bein our second year and some of thespeakers today are actually grantees ofour program and you’ll hear about themand their amazing work so as I as Imentioned my name is iZombie Ramada andI am the director of the digital Equityaccelerator on the Aspen Institute teamand I come to this work with with a lotof background and experience atInternational Development butspecifically in trying to inspirecollaborations and more coordinationaround achieving the sustainabledevelopment goals and big picture socialand economic impact goals globallyI’m going to go through and introduceour esteems panel and then we’re goingto open it up for conversation but myfirst Speaker really happy to be joinedby islamabanza who’s joining us fromIndiaum and Usama is the founder and directorof the digital empowerment Foundation uhwhich is a organization that has amission of eradicating informationpoverty in India and across the globalSouth they have to date empoweredmillions of users with a footprint ofover a thousand locations and 9 000digital foot soldiers as they call themacross 130 districts in 24 stateswelcome with Emmawe are also joined by Anna umI added an R there and I should haveevidence apologies Anna um Anna is theco-founder of startup lab Mexico acompany dedicated to helping smallbusinesses in Mexico navigate thecomplex world of digital transformationuh she’s also deeply committed to usingsocial entrepreneurship as a mean toimpact underdeveloped communities andwe’re really excited to have you with usAnna welcome[Music]who is the deputy director of lacanawhich is also uh based in Mexicoum and uh jemina has been working uh tocreate a lot of solutions specificallyfor incarcerated women uh in prisonpopulations so she’s the operationaldeputy director of La Canada which is asocial project that seeks to create jobopportunities for women in prisonthrough the implementation of programsand workshops that specifically aim toimpact the personal development andeconomic independence which is veryexciting project welcome to Manahi good morning everyonegood morning uh we have Tena banani whois the executive director of duartec uhantenna is an experienced professionalwith a lot of diverse experiencespecifically at the intersection ofgovernment Affairsum and public relations andinternational trade bilateralcooperation and also Renewables andenvironment and she is one of ourgrantees from Morocco from last year’scohort so welcome Tanawelcome everyonehello and lastly we have Devin wheelGavin is the founder and CEO of digifyAfrica which is a social Enterpriseworking across the African continent tohelp young people benefit from digitaleconomy with skills jobs and workopportunities and to date they’vetrained over 750 000 young people oncritical digital skills they also in2019 launched a digibot which is one ofthe world’s first automated WhatsAppchatbot courses which has hundreds ofthousands of active users in low-incomebackgrounds teaching them basic digitalskillsall right go ahead and start by givingus a quick landscape and then we’regoing to ask our panelists to helpunpack the statistics and moreinformation from their specific regionsand countriesbut globally I just wanted to to startby showing uh kind of a trend of globalinternet use around the world so todaytwo-thirds of the world’s populationuses the internetbut that also means that 2.7 billionpeople remain offlineand of those that remain offline we knowthat there is a disparity between accessboth based on poverty and also gender soyou see here a map in 2022 of globalinternet useum and globally there there is disparitybetween access to the internet butyou’ll notice that in lower incomecountries and middle-income countriesthat gap between digital access betweenwomen and men is actually substantiallyhigherandthat brings us to digital Equity sodigital Equity is we Define it which isuh how I want to frame our conversationtoday is a reality in which allindividuals and communities have accessto the information technology skills tolive a full and meaningfulum engagement in their societies andeconomies we know that 90 of jobs in thefuture will have a digital component sofor those that are less offline accessto important things like employmenteducation Healthcare and other essentialservices will become increasingly hardto have access toright nowit looks bleak there is hope we havehope because of all the amazingparticipants on our call todayum but it will take135.6 years to close the gender gaparound the world today and that numbergrew by an 86 years during the span ofcovid so 12 months during covidwe also know that in2012 countries around the worldincluding India Egypt and Nigeria lostan estimated 126 billion dollars ingross domestic products because womenwere unable to contribute to the digitaleconomy so as the title of our sessionand our webinar is today the onetrillion dollar loss of EconomicOpportunity in low and middle incomecountries because of exclusion of womenfrom the digital worldwe also know that in general women haveless access to not only the internet aswe just showed on the past screen butalso smartphones and access to otherdigital tools and that results also inwomen being underrepresented intechnology jobs IPC jobs management andacademic career so a lot of the stembackgrounds and andthe stemoutputs so another word for that but uhmatter four times more likely than womento be involved in ICTso we’re going to unpack that with ourpanel I’m going to start by lookinglet’s look at the India context first sosome I’m going to invite you to pleaseshare with us a little bit of thecontext specifically around women’seconomic inclusion in the region inwhich you work and if you can give us abit of a sense of what are some of thebarriers for women’s accessto Economic Opportunity educationopportunity and health carethank you very much I’m very excited tosee a large respect Community watchingall of us trying to hear something veryimportant that the woman inclusion indigital uh arenain the other story is uh you know as faras we are concerned is is slightlydisappointing but also very very helpfulslightly disappointing from theperspective that India is a patriarchalcountry by nature and by practice andthat actually is the biggest harmful ofpolicy making too which can be inclusiveof women of any kind ever forget aboutdigital digital is the latest inclusionchallenge that we all have but uh youknow in general anything that we flag uhwe we have this uh you know bottle ofinclusion of women in any plan whetherwe want to buy anything for the familyor we buy anything for education and soon and so forth so that’s one bigpicture that uh that is there and thesecond thing is uh you know inclusion ofdigital from the perspectiveunderstanding that women can be moreinstrumental in lesson cost and that iswhere I want to bring in our experiencebeing an awardee of Aspen and HP is thatwe for the last 20 years most of ourintervention has been in rural India andwhere our anchors or women the ruralentrepreneurs are women The Selectivewomen who actually drive digital and ourresearch shows that when you hand over adigital tool in the hands of a woman theimpact is you know multiple acts higherand the cost is much lower for example awoman of the house if she becomesdigitally illiterate the entire housebecomes digital Limited if a woman ofthe house does business which includedigital inclusion or a digital deviceshe is much more honest than a male partof the family and therefore the moneythat she earns goes to home and buildingHome Building education sending childrento education third the accountability ofimplementation of any project that youdo if your anchor is women and the toolis digital the accountability is verynaturally very high among the women theyare very accountable they are veryresponsible you don’t have to do extracost of monitoring and evaluation tofind out what is going on wrong or rightand so on and so forth so from all andthere is a research that has been donegoing across thousands of our centerswhich is run by women digital centerswhich serve people on the ground whoprovide connectivity who provide digitaleducation digital literacy when theresearch was done it was it found outthat the women are much more productivewomen are saving more money women aretaking money home rather than somewhereelse and they are producing at leastfour to five times more educationalimpact of digital inclusion than anybodyelse and the latest is the biggestlatest addition is that when you areconnected in the modern world you arealso startedsuffering from misinformation fake newshate speech and so on and so forth andalmost no one can tell you what is theright information there is a lack ofunderstanding and it has been found thatif the woman is at the end of the userthen the forwarding team doesn’t takeplace as high as the men will form or inthe misinformation she she would crosscheck the information whether it isright or not you know she won’t believeinto the information immediately but ask10 times whether this information isright or wrong so there are there arethere there are things that we are nottalking across the world you justmentioned that 327 million women areunconnected which is like equal into acountry of U.S you know if allunconnected women are kept in one placeyou are like a country and you know weare not only losing money but we arealso not saving money we are spendingextra money by indulging giving digitaltools in the hands of menwithout giving preference to women soyou are actually suffering more not onlyit’s a business opportunity but it’salso a lost opportunity you know uh youwere losing more money you are investingper person per man more money to makethem digitally inclusion digitallyinclusive than a woman will do so awoman having a mobile phone in her ismore effective in just about 200 thananybody else she is a educator she is adomestic responsible person she is amicro entrepreneur and she’s also adissimulator of right information andthat’s what I’m learning I’m coming fromin India and I’m not taking this exampleand anecdote of this example from one ortwo I am talking about we have 2 000digital centers across the country in100 40 or 50 districts and thisexperience is coming from the ground inmultilingual geographies inmulti-dimensional bibliography and inthe Deep rural areas and that’s what Iwould like I wanted to share with thisplatform that take digital take womenhave not one trillion loss you knowmultiply but several trillion inventedmore with less investment that’s whatour learnings is at the moment thank youvery muchI wanted to shareum just a quick statistic from a 2020National Family Health survey in Indiathat only 42 percent of Indian womensurveyed had ever used the internet uhin comparison with 62 percent of menum but on a positive note the mobileinternet gender gap did narrowum from 68 to 50 in 2017 due to moreaffordability of access to not onlysmartphones but but also the internetyeah but I’m going to go over uh to youin the South Africa uh and maybe youguys worked also acrossincontinent so can you uh please answerthe question from from your perspectivewhat are barriers of access for digitalEquity specifically for womensureum well I mean I think first andforemost there’s the issue of dataI think this is obviously a a problemfor Access generally across thecontinent and it’s particularly bad inwell particularly extreme in SouthAfrica because the cost of data relativeto to wages and the cost of living inSouth Africa is is particularly steepum so given the fact that um you knowwomen are less likely to access theinternet anywayand one startling statistic about SouthAfrica in particular is 97 of domesticworkers are women so low-income jobs areyou know largely done by women sotherefore you know there’s there’s hugebarriers just getting on the Internetjust accessing basic internet whichplays itself out into otherother kind of Dynamics like being ableto access basic Financial Servicesdigital Financial Servicesum so obviously women are much lower inthe percentages there and then we work alot in terms of access to employmentinitiatives and I thinkthe trends you know clearly mirror theones that you talked about at thebeginning of this sessionum but but another kind of startlingstatistic there was that only 2.9 out of22 female graduatesin the ICTsector are employed in the sectorum and there’s a very very low rate ofof womenum being in senior management positionsas well so there is that I mean there isthat obviously income and workinequality entrenched in the companyalready and but it’s more extreme in inthe ICT sector as well and in terms ofearningsumfor exampleum the government does talk a a reallygood game in South Africa about thisum and and the goals that we have uh youknow and and I think there is a therehas been a serious effort from thepublic and private sector here uh toparticularly address the access Gapum try and there’s a there’s a a pushedby 2024 to try and get up to 80 of thepopulation having internet access it’scurrently hovering just above 55 percentum but the the big themes for for us arein our work are really about digitalliteracy and making that accessibleum with with women and girls in mindparticularly but also entry into thelabor market in the ICT sector and theability to build sustainable andsuccessful careersand I’m going to go over to youum for the Mexico context uh what aresome of the uh barriers for women’seconomic inclusion in Mexico and maybealso if you can give us an overallunderstanding of of the uh situation forwomen’s economic empowerment andeconomic inclusionyes thank you well from here in Mexicolikeum 70 of the territory has internet likewhite internet the thing here is thatthe lowest or the forest communitiesapart from the urban or the city are theones that doesn’t have are the ones thatare poorso here in Mexicothe women are the ones that are stayinghome and the ones are that are likehouseholds and men are the ones thatwill go to work like in the factories orin the fields and the women are the onesthat are staying home and the ones thathave the education of the children’shere butin what we do in startup lab is that weare having helping them these women’sthat are leading businesses like makingtheir food or having some products tosell so we are helping them toassure that they have a digitaltransformationeducation in how tobecome better businesses like in thehelping them to sell through theinternetwith digital toolswe could hear you Anna if you want tocontinueum andhere in Mexico like it’s a very variatedpopulation like we have the one of therichest man in the world but also wehave a very poor poor people thatdoesn’t have uh a digital phone orconnection or even light so it’s a veryof the population here sosomeone are very rich but someone arevery very poor that doesn’t have accessto all these tools are on the internetand it’s very difficult to reach themforeignI’m going to come over to youum because you also work uh you knowAnna’s talking about marginalizedcommunities you are working in the samecountry in Mexico with even moremarginalized populations the the women’sprison population which oftentimes mostpeople don’t even think about when itcomes to programming specifically fordigital inclusion programmingum can you speak to the demographic ofpeople that you serveum and uh women’s economic exclusionfrom the vantage point of of thecommunities that you’re also workingwithyeah well first of all I think Asanasaid we have a lot of disparities inMexico and and I think that’s that’s oneof the big problems that we have also asyou saidum in lacana we work with women inprison in Mexico City and the state ofMexico which is one of the biggeststates in in in in the countryum and of course we really don’t thinkabout that kind of population I thinkit’s sometimes it’s um easy is just tothink aboutum children or poor people Etc becauseit’s something that we can see but whenwe talk about women in prison it’s justonly that we don’t see them it’s it’snot uh something that is over there it’snot important and in Mexico we have alot of cultural issues with thatsoum as you can imagine when you’re inprison you don’t have access to anythingfirst of all because you don’t haverights do you just have your humanrights but but not like citizen rightsuh so I think that’s a very importantbecause they can’t have access toanything and the other thing is thatum 80 of the women that are imprisonedcomes for a very pure environment soeven outside when they were in Libertythey don’t have access uh to most of ofthe things that usually you should havebecause because you live in Mexico or orbecause other people in Mexico haveum and and of course we have like aamazing gender witch gap on a differentWorkforce participation if we thinkabout women and men so I think all thisis crucial to promoting gender equalityand how we Empower women in a lot ofaspects of their livesum and this isn’t it’s not it doesn’tmatter if you’re in in jail or inLiberty is I think in Mexico we stillhave a lot of things to work on andum the other thing that um I was umthinking about what Osama says is thatwomen in Mexico work a lotum a lot of women in Mexico work morethan a man and we have more savings andwe understand that we have to take careabout of their of our families but stillwe have less participation for examplewhen we talk about financial servicesmore than a 50 sorry more than 35percent of the population in women don’thave a credit card just because they arewomen just because they don’t have anyidea on how to get to the bank and haveone and and and it’s free and you canhave it uh but they prefer to have theirSavings in their own house and sometimeswhen they they haveumlike a husband or a partner the husbandor the partner is the one that take careof the money just take the money of thewomen and do like normal thingsum so I think we we also have to work inthat andum for example it’s estimated that uhapproximately half of small andmedium-sized Enterprises in in latam andin Mexico are owned by women and despiteof that of this the World Bank reportsthat around 70 percent of financingrequests made by women entrepreneurs indeveloped in developing countries likeMexico are rejected just because theyare womenum and maybe they don’t have thethe same experiences and as men’s in inbusiness but we understand that they aregood and and that’s something that’simportant in in Mexico’s economic rightnowand I think in addition there is agender digital divide in Mexico which isvery huge which is important and we haveto address that uh because women haveless access to digital Technologies andare less skilled using them because whenwe are in the school it’s not common inMexico when you’re in a public schoolthat you have amazing computer labs oror you have a phone or you have a laptopEtc so you start growing with with lackof thatum digital skills so when you’re olderand you have to take care of your familyor you have to take care of something oryou want to to have a new business youhave like these limitationsum so for example in Mexico around 50percent of women uh well it doesn’t letless than well in 50 less likely to owna cell phone according to win to men sofor example the disparity and cell phoneownership factors into less access todigital Financial Servicesa phone is critical for opening bankaccounts and to see how your money isgrowing Etc and you can use like you canhave a better use of financial toolssuch as money transfers applying forcredits online payments etc etc so ifyou don’t have a phone you don’t eventhink about thatum so I think addressing thesechallenges and promoting women’seconomic inclusion in Mexico requirescoordinated action by the government theprivate sector and Society of course andwe need to think about that because I’malways thinking imagine if Mexico’seconomy will like uh if we double downour efforts if we if all women that havelike this small businesses have a bankaccount and have more participation inthe in the Mexico’s economic maybe wecan have a different country hieverybody I’ve also lost internet accessand I’m dialing in on my mobile phonewith that without access to my computerscreen so uh sincere apologies for thatum Ximena you youum you talk about something reallyimportant which is also theum kind of the responsibility ofmultiple sectors including thegovernment in providing these uh theseServicesum you all represent non-profitorganizations that are oftentimes theservice providersum but we do know that true andsustainable solution for digitalinequity do live across multiple sectorswe do require government uh Solutions werequire policy change we also requiremore funding and more financing and moreInnovative financing and investing intomore Innovative technologyum Tana I think we have you backum so if we can go over to you to todiscuss the Mexican the Morocco contextbut also if you can unpack a little bitmore about the the Partnershipsum as you address your response pleaseyes thank you hazami so I was saying uhthat the Morocco women activeparticipation in uh in the economy hashas gone backwards uh since 2000 we wereat a bit above 22 percent and now we aremerely to 16 and that is in spite of theincrease in in indicators uh of educateaccess to education uh to health care touh to mobility and all those uh numbersthat we seem to think that there are uhthat are umthere are obstacles for for access toemployment so when we uh startedthinking about how to tackle uh economicempowerment and we dug into the numbersand the you know the economic uh factorsabout the uhum the availability of of jobs ofIndustries we noticed that this therewas this disparity first between therural and the urban areas instead oftalking about rural and urban I preferto talk aboutdisadvantaged territories becausesometimes the peri-urban areas are justan extension of the rural areas and alsosome small towns even though they areidentified as small cities they theyhave a very dominant uh rural uh natureand so when we dug into those uh thepopulations of women in those uh inthose areasum the the the most of the programs thathave catered to uh supporting economicactivity of women in Rome areas theyconsidered that the the whole ruralfemale rural population was illiteratewas disconnected but when we went uh tothe field and we met with uh with uhwith potential uh beneficiaries or orparticipants we realized that there wasa group of women who were young theywere educated and they were alsodigitally connected and they happened tolive in the in the rural areas either bychoice after they finished their schoolthey went back or by some familycircumstances because uh their uhthey’re they’re caring for all theirparents they have a sick uh brother orso they are active they’re just notcompensated and they need something todo uh because they can’t go to a regularconventional job and there are noIndustries or or employers around themso we thought about entrepreneurship andwe thought if we can and bring andsupporttraining for entrepreneurship to thesepopulations of youngeducated and connected women then we uhyou know how could we use the digitaltools to to to improve access to totraining and support to entrepreneurshipbut also because of the uh the thelimitations of the market in thosecommunities there there would be noum feasible entrepreneurship for them ifthey don’t have access to the onlinemarkets so that’s why we put the digitalimmersion workshop and training whichconsists ofumdigital marketing tools and also webdevelopment very basic no code justWordPress for those entrepreneurs to tobe able to be on the net and be able toMarket their products Paradox on the netand that way giving them the fullpotential of expanding their businessbeyond the geographic and the logisticallimitations of their uh communities andwe went a step uh forwardum into this process into a communityengagement process and we thought if wewant these women to be able to toexchange in a digital world we need alsoto include their communities in the inthe digital space and so we designedum an engagement or a leadership actionwithin their programs by which eachparticipant would have to give twoworkshops in her community one about uhraising awareness about entrepreneurshipopportunities so it she would Inspireother people in her community to if theyhave a project idea to to go ahead andlaunch and and why they should do thatinstead of waiting for employment andtwo to uh to conduct digital literacyworkshops for people who are excluded ofthe digital uh spaceuh and we’ve been successful in doing soand we’ve had uh we’ve had 40-fold uhCommunity beneficiaries uh that hasbenefited either from uh awareness toentrepreneurship or uh digital literacyand this is all done thanks to thedigital uh the hybrid tool that we useto to uh to train so our programs theyspan over six months and they go uh onepart goes uh virtually it’s online andone part is done in person to reinforcethe the peer-to-peer learning andexchange I want to go back to one thingthat you had um the hazam you hadmentioned at the beginning of this uh ofthis uh of this sessionum usually the information that isshared about the connectivity or accessto Internet is partially biased and I’mgoing to explain why uh when we say thatuh you know 75 percent of the populationhas access to Internet what it means isthat it has a smartphone and it hasaccess to the 3G or 4G uh Universalcoverage but we all know that if you arein this training space if you’re in theeducation space if you are into you knowpedagogy Tool uh development you cannotaccess you cannot achieve or you cannotum you know Target you cannot get toyour population online if you don’t havea quality Broadband uh connection andthat is something that is that hasactually been excluding us uh as astrainers to go and Implement ourprograms closer to the populations tothe most excluded population so wealways have to go to the nearest urbantown that has a broadband connection ifwe want to implement our in-person uhworkshops for example for the for thedigital immersion Workshop to to do webdevelopments for those uh for thosewomenso we need I mean in addition to raiseawareness about the what is digitalEquity we also need to correct some ofthe bias information and a biased uhknowledge that seems toum spread the idea that that that we’revery Advanced that everything is okayand everything is accessible andeverybody can be uh on the net if theychooseyeah and that’s a really good pointtennaum I mean we’re a case in point examplewe’re both in major cities globallyum and both of our internet uhconnectivity keeps droppingum I think you know you absolutely arecorrect and you’re talking about thepillars of digital Equity there’s accessto the tools themselves like access to amobile phone then there’s affordabilityof the internet but then they’re simplyaccess to infrastructureum itself and that is also a barrier buteven for people that have those threecomponents knowledge of how to thennavigate to the internet or contentthat’s relevant to them orunderstandable to themum is also a barrier so there are fourpillars and barriers of access but someI’m going to come back to youum as we’re uh thinking about Solutionsa lot of the work that your organizationdoes is not onlyum you know uh talking to and trainingpeople on digital literacy but you’realso employing these women to then benot only service providers so you’reyou’re you’re addressing a problem butthen also providing an employmentopportunity uh for the women to be thenfront line responders can you explain abit about the importance ofum kind of maybe Partnerships and therole of ecosystem approaches toaddressing digital Equity because youare addressing them in multiple up frontso you’re addressing employment you’readdressing also lack of uh of trainingand education you’re also addressinglack of infrastructure simultaneously socan you speak to the multi-prongapproach therewell thank you very much uh actually uhwhen you go to rural parts of thecountry anywhere I would say but mostlyin India you will first face a male whowill coming forward to you and try tooffer solution or responsibility and soon and so forth but when you go and lookat the parameters with who is it who hasnot reached who is not talking who issuffering who doesn’t know about thegovernment entitlements or this schemeor they think you will always find it iswomenso you know this has been for decadesyou know in in most of the country butcertainly in this part of the world uhfor sure so what we decided is thatlet’s first choose the smartest and themost forward-looking and slightly youknow proactive woman in that area rightby inquiring that who is slightly smartwho has been regularly been going toschool and has reached something who hasalready crossed the limitations and andcame forward in doing something and thenwe identify such women and hand overlots of lots of uh equipments andtraining and capacity building and tellher that listen you have so many peopleunconnected you have not largerpopulation of girls and women who do notknow about how to access education orhow to access banking information or howto access health information or how toaccess entitlement simple entitlementlike rations like a job opening and soon and so forth and then suddenly whathappens is that if it is a woman who isin front it has got equipment who istrained in connectivity and access anddigital literacy what happens is thatmost of the girls start coming to thatperson right it’s very natural you knowif the woman is having the setup on theinfrastructure if the other woman whowill come first so that itself actuallydrives an ecosystem in such a way thatthis shop or this place or thiscommunity space and this person isactually a person who is welcoming theperson who otherwise feel hesitant to goif this is a male part then there is alot of hesitancy many people may not saybecause of the safety reason many peoplewon’t say because of the system of whatyou call as that male female distancefrom each of you right uh it is alsobecause you form a certain kind offurther system or the whale system orsomething like that right in most of theculture in India at a grassroot levelpeople a woman put will in front of thethings even with the Elder relatives youknow so there are so many barriers rightand and these are cultural barrierstraditional barriers so when a woman issitting at the at the at the place whereshe is saying I have computers I haveconnectivity it automatically attractsother women who are suffering fromaccess so not having access trying tofind out something and that is actuallygiving a multiplier impact right justbecause you are choosing a woman youhave a larger footfall you have a largernumber of girls coming to you you arereaching more women by means ofproviding those government entitlementswhich is meant for them it’s very simpleyou know government says I’ll give youfree education government says I willgive you free food the government says Iwill give you free hand comments is XYZbut all of this first of all women donot know about it so again if they knowit is the male who is providing at theother end and she is hesitant to go tothe world so you know without reallyfighting patriarchy just because youchoose women as your anchor with adigital tool which is actually aconnection to all the services fromeducation to finance to everything youare enabling a large in a number of youknow beneficiary in your system whetherit’s access to education or somethinglastly I I would like to end it bysaying is that education is the firstmost attraction point for young girlsrightfor that the only place where they go isa school and after they reach pubertymost of them stop going because ofvarious reasons because of not nicetoilet not working toward it not havingyou know full of attendance of educationsystem and so on and so forth always gofar away but this kind of a you knowdigitally equipped Community Center runby women actually gives you access to alot of Education Without Really going toschool or even if you are going and notgetting a quality education here you canget a quality education and the lastlyis that Nano entrepreneurs who may notbe earning of hundred dollar a monthright 100 is a lot of money here youknow maybe 30 so 50 they may have a lotof products that they want to reach outto the larger number of people they needconnectivity they need a little traininghow to use WhatsApp or how to useCommerce on WhatsApp or for that matteron social media this is actually helpingthe woman sitting there becomes a youknow non-cultural barrier to the worldthat is hidden behind those deviceswhich was which otherwise was hidingbehind patriarchy right which is notthere now if a woman is sitting withthose devices and and automaticallyattracting those points and once you puta little success the whole village isnot appreciating it or see my wife isearning my wife is giving so many socialservices my wife is actually attractingso many people coming to her andeverybody is asking and and this is anew trend that we have been able tocreate and I will be very happy toprovide lots of study material about howthese women are smiling having a mobilefive quote unquote some of the girls andwomen say that I can leave my house Ican leave my husband but I cannot givethe mobile that I have snatched awayfrom my husband which is giving me somany business or he’s giving me so muchof Liberty which is giving me so much ofcontact among other fraternity aroundthe Villages so these are very veryexciting time that mobile is actuallybecoming a multifaceted tool ofempowerment Liberty freedom ofexploration and doing businessthat’s that’s really great um and and II want to Pivot over to You Gavinbecause we keep talking about Innovationand what we just heard from Osamaantenna and and Anna and and everybodyin Ximena is that sometimes it’s notnecessarily Innovation it’s SimpleSolutions and we can innovate ourprocess so it’s not creating somethingnew and flashy you know this idea thatInnovation is such a buzzword but it’srather creating tools that work andsometimes it’s meeting communities wherethey’re atum you guys uh created a chat bot uh asa mechanism as a tool I mean on WhatsAppright A lot of people use WhatsApp soyou create an innovation on a platformwhere people already are engaged can youtell us a bit more about what fueledyour use of a chat bot and a little bitmore about kind of the impact thatyou’re able to make by meetingcommunities where they’re atyeah so for many yearsour sort of higher scale digitalliteracy programs were delivered byYoung trainers on the ground uh acrossSouth Africa Kenya and Nigeria goinginto communities and there’s quite apowerful way of delivering training butum we felt like we wanted a digitaldelivery mechanism that wasuh you know appropriate for our type thetype of in our case young people we’retrying to reach who don’t have access togood devices and and don’t have muchmoney for dataand so really it was driven by our ownneed to try and get our content make ourcontent more accessibleum a lot of the other e-learningSolutions we looked at just did not seemappropriate and many of them of courseare designed with Western audiences inmindso we started using WhatsApp as alearner support tool um but eventuallyin 2019 pre-covid wewe decided to try and build our ownprograms and courses that that meantthat um users didn’t have to leaveWhatsApp to consume the content so we’vebuilt automated chatbot courses and overthe last three years we’ve developed itinto actually what is now a full kind oflearning management system that workswithin the WhatsApp environmentum and it’s been really successful interms of kind of getting people on boardum over 600 000 subscribers have been onthe platform in the last 18 months andof those62 have completed the content that’s onthere which is a basic digital literacycourses so it’s proving a great way toengage people in that kind of entrylevel content which is abouthow you can use your phone to accessgovernment services or financialservices or to search for a jobum but the the best stat really is thefact that people are completing thisthis program and the content and wantingmore so next for us is to try and deepenthe levels of Engagement we can offer uhwithin WhatsApp and try and push that toits limitum and of course it’s the really thelowest barrier of Entry because youdon’t have to download a map and it’svery low data usage and and many peopleknow how to use the the applicationalreadyuhum and I’m going to come over to you ondesigning Solutions with uh with womenyou are uh through startup uh lab inMexico working specifically to empowerwomen to be entrepreneurs so women tocreate businesses and to createSolutions in their communities can youunpack why it’s so important to designSolutions with and for women butspecifically with women and how thatthen impacts their communitiesyes and we have we have them and teachthem how to use WhatsApp as for theirbusiness and wemake for them a landing page or awebsite so they can sell onlineand we also help them to develop theirsocial media because everybody hassocial media like Facebook or Instagrambut like imper for personal things orfor family things but they on you theydon’t know how to use it for theirbusinesses so we teach them how to usethem and how to improve their salesusing social media and digital marketingso they can improve their businesses andwith that they start to sell more sothey improve their incomes and theircommunity and their families becomebetter because they are more integratedthey have more opportunities withoutmoney to improve their education to havea better way of life andwith the example that we are having withthose women’s other women want to havethe want to participants in our programsso they can behelped with with those tools and theycan improve their business and or starta business and improve their way oflivingand I think it’s very very important forthe community because likehaving a better way of lifeindecreases the violence that they live intheir communitieswhich is extremely important I meanyou’re talking about also theintersectionality of issues we know thatpoverty uh lack of educationalopportunities also results in lack ofAccess to Health Care Services alsoincreased domestic violence in somecases so this is a very important pointthat you brought upum Ximena I’m going to come to you tolook up houses Beyond infrastructure wetalked about lack of access to theinternet itself and lack ofaffordability but one of the audiencequestions was asking about the biggestchallenges that you’ve experienced intrying to improve digitization effortsin your communities and how have youactually addressed themyeah I think when we check about womenin prisonum the the biggest challenge is forwomen to truly believe that they deservethe same opportunities even if they arein prison that they deserve to haveum interesting workshops that theydeserve tolearn new things inside prison becauseif not we can’t talk about socialreintegration after that and also Ithink one of the biggest challenges thatwe face is toum with the discipline to go to classbecause a lot of women really don’t havethat discipline and that’s becausethere’s a lot of women that don’t forexample don’t go to school or or it’sthe first time that are doing somethinglike this so they don’tum maybe they don’t think it’s importantor they can’t understand that they haveto go every week to the workshop andalsoum the challenge with Mexicanauthorities to give us dignified spacesfor the workshops inside the prisonbecause they mostly they think that thisis not important and this is a waste oftime so we need to work with them toshare why this is important and I thinkit’s very important because if we givethis uh women and this population thetools to understand how to use thecomputer toum like close the digital Gap they canhave better jobs when they are um whenthey have their freedom so they can stayaway from crying and gives them a realsecond chance and if we talk about lesscrimes in Mexico we talk about a betterCity and a better country for everyoneand I things and I think there is wherewe have to focus the conversation aroundthisand and tana I’m going to come to you uhbecause the internet was not fair uh toyou today so you’re going to help closeus out hereum there’s a question around helpingwomen in countries like Afghanistan andIraq who are suffering with governmentare struggling rather with governmentpolicies and I’m going to build on thatand ask you to to also expand on whatmomentum do we need to build and what dowe need to change in order to actuallyhelp achieve digital inclusion for womenuh globallyI think that um there needs to beawareness that there’s a crucial spacefor collaborative action between allthose stakeholders in terms of Designingstrategies uh that are inclusive andalso co-designing those strategies withthe target populations And I stress onthe target populations because there areseveral groups of women if we try tomake a program for women in general it’sonly going to benefit a a small groupand it’s going to create frustrationwithin all the other women that don’tidentify themselves as part of theprofile or the Persona that has beendefined for this program so that’s whywe need to customize we need to bringSolutions strategies that are uh createdand co-created with the population thatcomes from the their needs and thatreally fitsfits the the expectations that they haveinterchanging their uh their their theireveryday life so there needs to be moreparticipative approach in those uhcollaborative actions and whereeverybody can bring either policy reformor equipment or Market opening forexample there are a lot ofunderdeveloped countries where themarket for infrastructure is notliberalized which makes the access uhvery difficult which makes it uhunaffordable so there needs to be allthese stakeholders uh come together andtalk about the the different obstaclesof digital inclusion when the presenceof the disfavored uh populations thatare being excluded then thank youwell thank you all very much we coulddefinitely continue this conversationfor a very long time uh please do lookup all of our speakers do follow theiramazing work um and them also onLinkedIn on social mediaum this type of work is only possiblewith a community support it’s going totake all sectors and all people toreally come together and createSustainable Solutionsum not only for women but for mostmarginalized communities uh globally wedo have our upcoming event series on the26th of July and we invite you all tojoin that we’ll focus specifically onthe educational digital divide andspecifically on Solutions uh for theNexus of digital equity and education wethank you all again for joining usplease do stay in touch with us um thankyou for your time and we will beDistributing this videoafterwards and a huge thank you to ourspeakers not only for joining us todayand for sharing all your wisdom but forall the work that you’re doing everysingle day in your communities and theadvocacy that you’re doing to upliftwomen and girls around the world sothank you very muchand with that we made you a doforeign

Women’s exclusion from the digital world has shaved $1 trillion from the GDP of low- and middle-income countries in the last decade. In a future where over 90% of jobs worldwide have a digital component, women’s access to and fluency with technology is a major barrier to education, economic opportunities, healthcare access, and gender parity.

On 11 July 2023, the Digital Equity Accelerator explored:

• Why women and girls experience barriers to technology access and use around the world
• How social and economic progress can be achieved through digital inclusion interventions
• How countries and communities can benefit by designing with and for women
• Examples of organizations from Africa and Asia poised to scale their reach and impact in serving women