In the context of International Women’s Day, we worked with our partners ReDI School of Digital Integration Munich and Denmark on a one-week awareness-raising campaign to bring light to the gender digital divide in vulnerable groups. The campaign included testimonials and a Toolkit that provides advice for adapting digital skills training to women’s needs.
The gender divide directly impacts the digital divide. While the Gender Equality Index from the European Institute for Gender Equality overall shows a small difference in basic digital skills between young men and women aged 16-24, the gender divide widens with age. This index shows as well that gender differences in digital skills are largest among those with low education, to the detriment of women. When looking at advanced digital skills, women are underrepresented in the Digital Economy: only 17% of ICT specialists in the EU are women. Additionally, women working in the ICT sector earn almost 20% less than men do. These indicators reflect the pressing need to address the gender digital divide. Fighting gender stereotypes while encouraging more women to participate in ICT will result in a more sustainable growth of the Digital Economy and an overall more inclusive society.
Within the gender digital divide, vulnerable groups such as elder women, rural women and low-educated women emerged as the ones most disadvantaged. To reach Europe’s Digital Compass target of 80% of people having at least basic overall digital skills by 2030, organisations such as our partner ReDI School of Digital Integration teach vulnerable groups valuable digital skills for improving their personal and professional lives. In the case of both ReDI Munich and ReDI Denmark, most of its students are women with refugee or migrant backgrounds. Our grant support reinforces these schools’ Digital Literacy Programs, which empower their female students by bringing them from lacking skills within the digital sphere to attaining foundational competencies in three of the competence areas defined in the DigComp Framework: information and data literacy; communication and collaboration, and safety. This program enables women to achieve new digital opportunities and to better integrate into their new countries and into the local labour market.
Together with both schools, we worked on an awareness-raising campaign to visualise the gender digital divide in vulnerable groups. In the context of International Women’s Day, from March 6th till March 10th we shared stories, a Toolkit with advice to adjust digital skills training to the needs of women in vulnerable situations and other impact posts to bring attention to the need to bridge the gender digital divide as a means to narrow the digital skills gap as well.
DigiCo partners with public and private organisations to tackle the growing digital skills gap through a targeted approach. Its collective is formed by digital inclusion advocates and training providers such as ReDI School of Digital Integration who enable individuals to gain the basic digital skills needed to obtain digital autonomy. We aim to give voice to the digitally excluded, so if you work on digital inclusion for vulnerable groups you can partner with us.
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