Womenomics should take centre stage in today's digital age
Access to the internet is an essential human right," declared the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2016. Yet, globally, about 2.6 billion people remain deprived of it and 57% of them are women, with a global digital gender gap of 8%. Only 19% of women in least developed countries used such a facility in 2020, as against 86% in the developed world.
As a pandemic-ravaged world necessitated rapid digitization, it had a profound impact on the employment landscape. It has been estimated that such disruptive changes are likely to create 70% of all new value, with digitally-enabled business models at the forefront, and 85% of all jobs that don’t yet exist. However, this impending scenario, because of social instability and an unequal concentration of power and wealth, is fraught with the risk of exacerbating the exclusion of women.
By 2030, about 40-160 million women need to transition to other occupations with more complex digital, cognitive, social and emotional skills for being employment-worthy, as an International Telecom Union (ITU) study shows. While women’s digital and tech-related literacy has been abysmally low, men are found to be four times more likely than women to be specialists in information-communication technology (ICT). At age 15, on average, only 0.5% of girls wish to become ICT professionals, compared to 5% of boys.
Women-owned startups receive 23% less funding and are 30% less likely to get a positive exit path compared to male-owned businesses, according to OECD data. Women make up one-third of the workforce at the world’s 20 largest tech companies, but hold only one-fourth of their leadership positions (UN Women). In fintech firms, women represent less than 13% of leadership (as founders or board
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