International Women’s Day 2023: “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”
From the early days of computing to the current era of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, women have made countless contributions to the digital world in which we increasingly live. Their accomplishments have stood out against all odds in a sector that has never truly welcomed or valued them.
Bringing women and other marginalized groups into technology results in more creative solutions and has greater potential for innovations that meet women’s needs and promote gender equality. Their lack of inclusion, by contrast, comes with massive costs: as per UN Women’s Gender Snapshot 2022 report, women’s exclusion from the digital world has shaved $1 trillion from the gross domestic product of low- and middle-income countries in the last decade—a loss that will grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025 without action. Reversing this trend will require tackling the problem of online violence, which a study of 51 countries revealed 38 per cent of women had personally experienced.