Bridging the digital gender divide
Our first ever Digital Gender Inclusion and Innovation Bootcamp aimed to empower community-based, refugee-led, and women-led organizations. This is how.
By Solji Oh, Associate Innovation Officer
Have you ever imagined your life without the Internet? Or the smartphone you’re holding?
Navigating the vast landscape of the digital world has become second nature to many — the endless opportunities and connections at our fingertips are simply part of our every day. However, it is essential to recognize that not everyone has an equal stake in this digital transformation.
Enter the pervasive issue of the digital gender divide: a stark reality that hinders women, particularly those forced to flee their homes, from fully enjoying the benefits of our digital age.
To break down these barriers and forge a new path toward digital gender equality, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, recently held its first ever Digital Gender Inclusion and Innovation Bootcamp. Designed 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, the Bootcamp championed the potential of technology as a catalyst for empowerment and transformation.
More than 24 participants from 12 organizations working in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and East, Horn of Africa, and Great Lakes (EHAGL) regions attended the Bootcamp, held in July. We know they took a lot away from our sessions — but we also learned plenty from them, and from the experience as a whole. Some of those learnings are detailed below.
A note on the digital gender divide
For the more than 50 million forcibly displaced women and girls worldwide, opportunities made available by digital technology often remain limited or even out of reach. This gap is clearly evident in research conducted by GSMA, the trade association for mobile operators, among others.
In many communities affected by forced displacement, women and girls encounter a series of complex obstacles that impede their integration into the wider digital landscape. These challenges range from navigating stringent policy frameworks governing access to SIM cards, to dealing with the limited availability or high costs of digital devices and infrastructure, and struggling with insufficient digital literacy and skill sets. Additionally, forcibly displaced women and girls often grapple with harmful sociocultural norms, stereotypes, and biases, not to mention the distressing reality of online gender-based violence.
As a result, women are disproportionately excluded from the digital world, their voices silenced, and their stories untold. The digital gender divide, like an invisible barrier, perpetuates inequality and restricts women’s access to protection, information, education, livelihoods, leisure, and empowerment opportunities.
The Bootcamp: A collaborative space
This year’s International Women’s Day was celebrated under the banner of DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality. In alignment with UNHCR’s new Digital Transformation Strategy 2022–2026, which identifies digital inclusion as a priority outcome, the Innovation Service took this opportunity to launch a Bootcamp designed to address the pervasive digital divide facing forcibly displaced women and girls.
Recognizing the impact of community-led digital transformation, we opted to focus this Bootcamp on community-based, refugee-led, and women-led organizations, to ensure they’re equipped with the necessary tools, skills, and resources to foster digital gender inclusion in their communities. Through a competitive call for applications that received more than 300 applications, 12 organizations were selected on the basis of the relevance, gender focus, value for community, impact, and collaborative aspects of their work.
So, we had our team of participants: a diverse group whose perspectives and experiences would enrich the process, thanks to our skilled facilitators. The women-led and all-female team from Here I Am Studio (HIA) are experts in co-creating innovative approaches to include the excluded — specifically, women and girls caught up in humanitarian crises across the world. Meanwhile, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and GSMA — both of whom partner with UNHCR to advance connectivity for refugees — also stepped in to deliver essential training and resources.
After rigorous preparations designed to ensure an inclusive, innovative approach, the Digital Gender Inclusion and Innovation Bootcamp kicked off online on July 10.
Fostering inclusivity
Bringing diverse people together is a great first step, but we know it isn’t, on its own, a guarantee that all participants will be meaningfully included and empowered to share their experiences. Recognizing the challenges of making meaningful connections — perhaps particularly in an online space — the Innovation Service worked hard to foster inclusivity, as a key tenet of our approach to dismantling the digital gender divide.
To make sure everyone has an equal chance to be heard, there’s no better approach than talking with them and really listening. Through pre-interviews with participants, we identified the following strategies to ensure the Bootcamp was an inclusive space:
1. Providing translation and interpretation service: We know grassroots organizations from non-Anglophone countries might not be comfortable communicating exclusively in English in this kind of intense workshop setting. From the Bootcamp’s online application forms to the almost week-long online training and post-Bootcamp surveys, UNHCR provided Arabic interpretation and translation services for Arabic-speaking participants, to ensure they felt fully able to engage.
2. Making sure people are connected: UNHCR and HIA asked participants about their access to digital devices and internet connectivity, as well as sending around a network connectivity assessment, as part of the pre-Bootcamp surveys and interviews. Those joining the Bootcamp from Yemen and South Sudan, who faced challenges accessing digital devices and stable connectivity, were accommodated at UNHCR’s community centers and offices.
3. Understanding different digital literacy levels: Divergence in participants’ skills and experience with digital technology can hinder inclusion, if unaddressed. To ensure that all participants felt comfortable with the digital tools used over the course of the programme, the Bootcamp team held a preliminary instruction session.
4. Promoting diversity: The participants of the Bootcamp come from diverse backgrounds and contexts. Organizations were either from or based in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Syria, Uganda, and Yemen, and they took many different forms, ranging from community-based, refugee-led and women-led organizations to a local start-up. This diversity ensured that a wide range of perspectives and creative ideas were brought to the workshops.
5. Encouraging networking and partnerships: The Bootcamp’s interactive sessions, including a dedicated pitch session, enabled participating organizations to encourage and inspire each other in their efforts to close the digital gender gap in their respective communities. Participants provided feedback on others’ project ideas and proactively reached out to each other about potential collaborations. Let’s Help International’s Festo Nduwayezu, who is from South Sudan, said:
We are inspired and motivated by the remarkable community-based, refugee-led, and women-led organizations that came together to bridge the digital gender divide for displaced women and girls. The Bootcamp provided us with a unique opportunity to amplify our impact and equip ourselves with the necessary skills to build inclusive and innovative solutions. … Moreover, connecting with like-minded peers has created a strong sense of camaraderie and passion for driving change and creating a better future for women and girls through peer-to-peer learning.
6. Localizing digital gender inclusion: UNHCR believes that successful and sustainable responses to forced displacement are derived from meaningful engagement and inclusion of organizations led by people forced to flee, specific groups who face intersectional challenges, as well as local organizations. By empowering and supporting local actors — those who know best the communities we work with and for — we help ensure these organizations can take the lead on humanitarian and development programming, including on issues like the digital gender gap.
Nurturing the culture of innovation
Successful innovation starts with a deep understanding of the context it will operate in and the challenges it seeks to address. With this in mind, the Bootcamp’s sessions and materials were designed and developed in consultation with the participants. Prior to the Digital Gender Inclusion and Innovation Bootcamp, each grassroots organization shared with UNHCR and HIA the digital inclusion challenges they had identified as facing forcibly displaced women and girls in their communities (including, for instance, online safety, access to education, gender stereotypes, digital literacy, and access to devices), as well as ideas around how they might tackle these adversities.
Then, UNHCR and HIA brought together all Bootcamp partners and guest speakers for a preliminary Definition Workshop, to define and design the bespoke training sessions and materials in alignment with what the organizations had articulated as needed on the ground.
The result of this preparatory, codesign work was a diverse series of workshops, covering topics that spanned from how to identify the digital gender gap and how to design and deliver digital literacy curriculum for women and girls, to women’s economic empowerment using digital technologies, online safety awareness training for women and girls, when to look for digital solutions, and the list goes on.
One participant noted:
The one aspect I truly loved about the Bootcamp was the session that specifically focused on understanding the crucial distinctions between when and which technology to employ, and whether to leverage existing solutions or invest in new ones. This part of the training illuminated the considerations needed when deciding on technology strategies, such as opting for pre-existing tech, creating new solutions, or integrating with current services. This nuanced understanding is invaluable in optimizing resources and ensuring the effectiveness of our technological applications.
Over the course of the four-day Bootcamp, the participating organizations also learned key innovation tools, to assist in designing and implementing effective projects to address the digital gender divide. In a post-Bootcamp review, most participants mentioned the following tools and skills as ones they will take forward and incorporate into their ways of working:
- Empathy mapping: This preparatory exercise encourages participants to take a deeper dive into their audience or target population’s feelings, thoughts, and attitudes, in order to better cater to their needs.
- User journey mapping: This exercise involves creating a detailed, visual representation of a user’s interactions with a planned service, to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement.
- Understanding social and cultural barriers to digital access: Rigorous research into these barriers can inform the design of interventions that are sensitive to the social and cultural contexts of service users, ensuring they are inclusive and effective.
Overall, Bootcamp participants found the workshops to be clear and the facilitators to be effective. For UNHCR, this initiative afforded us an opportunity to gain greater insights into the ways the digital gender divide manifests in various contexts — and the creative, energetic actors engaging with communities to dismantle it. For participants, the learnings will be taken forward as a means to amplify their impact in this space. Festo Nduwayezu, of Let’s Help International, noted:
The deep understanding of UNHCR’s approach to digital inclusion and innovation has enabled us to build transformative solutions to address the digital gender divide. Working closely with diverse stakeholders has taught us how to validate our assumptions and refine our ideas to better serve the needs of vulnerable populations.
So, what’s next?
The Bootcamp has paved the way not only for participants to strengthen their digital inclusion programming, but also for more initiatives like the Bootcamp to contribute to promoting digital gender equality — and building the capacity of organizations to do so, too — in contexts of forced displacement.
Even better: one concrete outcome will be a set of innovative digital gender inclusion projects. The Bootcamp culminated in each participant organization pitching their forward-thinking ideas to bridge the digital gender divide. These pilot project proposals are now under consideration to receive seed funding. One Bootcamp participant eloquently laid out the stakes of this work:
The main learning from the Bootcamp was understanding the critical nature of identifying and addressing gaps in digital gender inclusion. The Bootcamp highlighted how these gaps significantly affect women’s participation in digital use and can perpetuate discrimination and exclusion. Understanding these gaps is crucial because they directly impact women’s ability to participate in the digital world, access educational resources, seek employment opportunities, and engage in social networks. If left unaddressed, these gaps can further widen the digital divide and exacerbate existing inequalities.
In the coming months, UNHCR will be providing both technical and financial support to the selected projects. Stay tuned for updates on the innovative ideas being put into action by these digital gender equality champions, and the ways in which the learnings and networking opportunities made possible through the Bootcamp are strengthening the effectiveness of that work.
If you’re exploring digital tools and approaches for bridging the digital gender divide in displacement settings, we would love to hear from you. Get in touch at hqconref@unhcr.org.
