8 ways we’re dismantling the digital gender divide
On International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating the many remarkable women (and others!) innovating with us to empower forcibly displaced women and girls through transformative technology and digital education.
This year, International Women’s Day is focusing on the digital gender divide — a persistent gap in women’s access to digital technology and in their representation and participation in the design and governance of our online tools. Here at the Innovation Service, the challenges forcibly displaced women and girls experience accessing online spaces, information, and opportunities is something we think about and work to address every day.
For the more than 50 million women and girls currently experiencing forced displacement around the world, digital opportunities are often out of reach. The digital gender divide tends to be even more pronounced in refugee communities than in the general population. Forcibly displaced women and girls engage less with technology and have lower levels of access to it than men and boys — with big implications for their safety, socioeconomic inclusion, and self-reliance.
At UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, we believe displaced people have the right, and the choice, to be part of a connected society, and to have access to technology that enables them to build better futures for themselves, their families, and the world. It’s essential that we close the digital gender divide — and innovation is a crucial part of that work.
One of the Innovation Service’s key workstreams, Digital Innovation, focuses explicitly on ensuring equitable and inclusive digital access across diverse communities — but all of our programmes contain projects that are working to close the gap. On International Women’s Day 2023, we’re taking stock of the work being done by the Innovation Service and our inspiring partners to ensure this digital age leaves no one behind.
Here are just eight ways we’re dismantling the divide:
1. Launching a digital bootcamp to give displaced women and girls the tools they need.
We’re super excited to announce the launch of a bootcamp run by the Innovation Service to provide training and support to refugee-led and community-based organizations seeking to break down the digital gender divide for forcibly displaced women and girls.
If you’re part of a community-based organization, a refugee- or women-led organization, a national organization, or a social enterprise working with female refugees and/or on digital inclusion, we strongly encourage you to apply for this unique capacity-building opportunity!
Find out more about this awesome initiative here.
2. Ensuring women take the lead on our projects.
“The future is female” is a catchy slogan, but here at the Innovation Service, that future is already here. Almost 80% of our team identify as women — and we work to ensure that our project teams across the world take gender into account.
We know dismantling the divide is a job for everyone, and that male input is essential to delivering a more equitable future. But, with women playing key roles in determining the direction of travel for our digital and data projects, we ensure diverse perspectives and a gender-responsive lens are brought to our interventions.
3. Helping displaced Indigenous women artisans in Brazil access digital markets.
In Roraima, Brazil, Indigenous artisans displaced from Venezuela produce handcrafted items to generate income, but they face difficulties accessing markets to sell their products. So — with the support of our Digital Inclusion Fund — UNHCR and Serviço Jesuíta a Migrantes e Refugiados worked with the community to design, develop, and implement an e-commerce project.
At the end of 2022, 19 Warao artisans — the majority of them women — completed training to access online marketplaces and manage digital risks, enabling them to safely and effectively promote their products online, access digital livelihoods, and scale up their businesses.
4. Supporting a refugee-led social media campaign against gender-based violence.
“While we were designing our project, we realized two things,” says Andriana of Global Girl Media Greece. “First of all, the MeToo movement just started in Greece two years ago and we realized the refugee community is not involved, not at all, in the discussion. And the second thing we realized is we need to involve also men, to have male engagement in gender-based issues we want to deal with, in media and in general.”
With support from our Refugee-led Innovation Fund, this all-female collective is working to make online and physical spaces safer for displaced women and girls. Their project will give young women from the displaced and host communities the skills they need to produce a mixed-media awareness raising campaign on gender-based violence, harnessing the power of social media to change the narrative on this complex issue.
5. Connecting a displaced Indigenous community in Colombia.
In the Tres de Abril settlement in La Guajira, Colombia, a community of displaced Wayúu people struggled to access basic connectivity. The settlement’s more than 500 families faced barriers to communicating with loved ones, progressing applications for temporary protection status, and — for at least 250 children — continuing their education online.
Backed by our Digital Inclusion Fund, UNHCR started exploring community-led internet services as a solution. With the help of partners Colnodo and Hermanos Sin Condiciones, and with extensive community consultations, the Weinüin Walapüin network was born. Wayúu women took on key leadership roles to bring this essential project to life — mediating with the community, participating in workshops, and ensuring this tool could help champion Wayúu culture and traditions.
Read more about the “weaving our dreams” network here.
6. Cultivating women-led data projects to support displaced communities.
Our all-women data team is, in 2023, supporting 16 diverse, impactful projects that seek to bring a human rights-based and equitable approach to bear on new data sources and technologies, to ensure UNHCR has the information it needs to deliver benefits to everyone in the communities we serve. Over 60% of the projects currently supported by our Data Innovation Impact Fund are led by women.
For instance, Purvi Patel and Leslie Mendez are driving forward a project in Peru applying data science and machine learning to an innovative combination of datasets to better enable UNHCR to predict which households involved in livelihood interventions are likely to need additional support. Meanwhile, Sherman Kwan, based in Bangkok, is the organizational backbone of a Due Diligence project to responsibly employ AI-based software to enhance and streamline UNHCR’s proactive risk monitoring and relationship work.
Through the Data Innovation Impact Fund, we’re championing the creative ideas of women across UNHCR — and their innovative data projects are using cutting-edge digital tools in new ways to deliver manifold benefits to displaced communities.
7. Upskilling women and girls in Lebanon to safely access online spaces.
Our digital literacy training in Lebanon benefitted more than 650 women and girls, ensuring they have the necessary tools to safely access online spaces. Using a training-the-trainers model, this project identified key individuals in the displaced communities of Mount Lebanon and provided them with the knowledge they needed to promote digital literacy within their communities.
Out of 750 trainees, 87% were female! After a course that took them through safe and effective use of the internet, UNHCR platforms, and online education, all participants experienced an increase in confidence while using digital platforms.
8. Co-creating a digital literacy curriculum with refugees in Indonesia.
In Indonesia — as elsewhere — low levels of digital literacy prevent refugees and asylum-seekers from accessing services, receiving relevant information, and using digital tools. For women, this challenge is amplified by a perception among some communities that the internet is not for them.
To bring down these barriers, UNHCR — with the support of our Digital Inclusion Fund — has co-created a digital literacy curriculum with refugees and is exploring how to deliver this training through a community-based, refugee-led approach. The curriculum includes a debunking of gendered myths about online spaces as well as information about ways to mitigate digital risk — and one partner organization, led by women refugees, will specifically focus on training women and girls for its delivery.
Learn more about the UNHCR Innovation Service’s work on our website. You can find a full list of the projects we’re supporting in 2023 here.
