Women must escape the digital straitjacket

Are women in developing economies marginalised online?  The answer is yes, and gender inequality is likely to worsen rather than get better unless policymakers make targeted interventions to enhance the participation by women online.

A recent study sponsored by the Web Foundation, and launched in Nairobi last week made startling revelations about women participation online – or more precisely lack of it.

The study, which focused on ten developing countries, including Kenya, found that women are 50 per cent less likely to access the Internet than men in the same communities.

Additionally only 37 per cent of the women surveyed used the Internet regularly, compared to 59 per cent of the men surveyed.

Even more surprising, of the few women who use the internet, a big chunk of them do not use it to increase their economic fortune or participate in public forums. 

Their male counterparts on the other hand were observed to use the internet to empower themselves economically, socially and politically.

The study confirms that the traditional gender gap we experience in the real word has been replicated in the digital world; the girl-child is as marginalised online as she is offline.

Why should it matter?

As President Obama recently reminded us, we have a big team to play in pursuant of our socio-economic development and it is silly to leave half of our team on the bench, while our competitors deploy their full potential.

Put differently, Kenya is running on a tank that is half-full, and deliberately refusing to run at full capacity.

LESS AGGRESSIVE

Our competitors are able to drive their agenda further while we get stuck trying to re-fill, often with recycled, tired ‘used fuel’.

This is evident in our politics, business, academia, judiciary, churches and pretty much in every aspect of our socio-economic sphere.  How can we change this?

The first step is to understand the barriers facing women wishing to get online. Lack of formal educational, particularly at higher or tertiary levels was one of the predictors of not getting online, according to the study.

More educated women are more likely to be online than those who are less educated. Indeed lack of formal education implied lesser income potential, which subsequently implied inability to afford internet devices and infrastructure. One must afford smartphones and internet bundles regularly in order to participate online effectively. 

Most women are therefore trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, triggered by the inability to access higher education.

The study observed, however, that even for women who were educationally and economically empowered to access the internet, their ability to benefit from it was much lower than their male counterparts.

In Kenya, only 21 per cent of the women surveyed were using the internet to search for critical information on health, transport, jobs or legal rights. Women were also observed to be less likely to complain publicly or agitate for issues online.

Whereas the report cites cyber-bullying as one of challenges women face, there is also the cultural strait-jacket that the girl-child is subjected to right from birth.

Girls are conditioned to be less aggressive and more submissive, girls are unconsciously pushed away from science-oriented careers, girls are…the list is endless.

We should mainstream gender issues within national ICT policies and strategies but this alone will not be sufficient to reverse the damage caused by social conditioning that weighs against the girl-child.

One way to change the marginalisation of women in cyberspace is by changing the attitudes against the girl-child offline. Unfortunately, even here, these attitudes are often perpetuated by mothers who subconsciously pass on the stereotyping they inherited from their own mothers.

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya, Faculty of Computing and IT. [email protected], @jwalu