Gender equality and empower all women and girls.
A global overview
Women and girls represent half of the world’s population and therefore also half of its potential. But, today gender inequality persists everywhere and stagnates social progress. Women continue to be underrepresented at all levels of political leadership. Across the globe,
women and girls perform a disproportionate share of unpaid domestic work.
Ensuring that women and girls have equal access to education, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes are essential elements of just societies.
A global perspective on gender equality from the UN Sustainability Development goals
There has been progress over the last decades: More girls are going to school, fewer girls are forced into early marriage, more women are serving in parliament and positions of leadership, and laws are being reformed to advance gender equality.
Despite these gains, many challenges remain: discriminatory laws and social norms remain pervasive, women continue to be underrepresented at all levels of political leadership, and 1 in 5 women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 report experiencing physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner within a 12-month period.
How is digital tech relevant to gender equality?
Areas of tension
These are the issues, negative impacts and concerns collectively raised by the attendees from our pilot workshops.
For the digital tech workforce
- Men are typically paid more for doing the same role in tech (hand-on technical or leadership) as their female and non-binary counterparts.
- Fewer female and non-binary role models in the tech industry mean it is harder to attract a diverse population into the industry and keep them there.
For the global population
- Teams building digital tech solutions do not have gender parity, and are more typically male dominated. This results in solutions that are biased to a male’s typical view of the world, and overlook the needs of and risks to females and non-binary genders in the solutions built.
How can we nudge these tensions for the better?
Grounds for hope
These are visions and ideas for change collectively raised by the attendees from our pilot workshops.
For the digital tech workforce
- Replace ‘default male’.
- Embrace our own unease.
- Greater representation in tech design.
- Awareness of power imbalances and structural/cultural frameworks to address that.
- Everyone assumes and checks for bias in their work / hiring.
For the global population
n/a
Keen to learn more?
If you’d like to explore these issues yourself, either as an individual or with your work colleagues, why not run your own workshop?
Our workshop methodology is open source and available for anyone to use for free. Alternatively you can hire trusted professionals to facilitate the process on your behalf.