CONCEPT PAPER

By: John Nicho B. Pagal

Prof: Mark Gennesis B. Dela Cerna, PhD
Topic: Bridging the Gender in New Normal Digital Distribute into the synopsis of Inclusive
Education
Analysis

The issue of this topic is “Bridging the Gender in New Normal Digital Distribute”, Every
child has the right to access safe, quality education.

Technology and the web can be an incredible empowering agent for young ladies yet an absence
of chances, abilities and a dread of segregation keep numerous from utilizing and making
advanced instruments and online substance.

Pawluczuk, A., Lee, J. and Gamundani, A.M. (2021), "Bridging the gender digital divide:
an analysis of existing guidance for gender digital inclusion programmes’ evaluations", Digital
Policy, Regulation and Governance, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 287-299. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPRG-
11-2020-0158, examine the existing gender digital inclusion evaluation guidance and proposes
future research recommendations for their evaluation. Despite modern progress in towards
gender equality and women’s empowerment movements, women’s access to, use of and benefits
from digital technologies remain limited owing to economic, social and cultural obstacles.
Addressing the existing gender digital divide is critical in the global efforts towards the United
Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In recent years, there has been a global
increase of gender digital inclusion programs for girls and women; these programs serve as a
mechanism to learn about gender-specific digital needs and inform future digital inclusion
efforts. Evaluation reports of gender digital inclusion programs can produce critical insights into
girls’ and women’s learning needs and aspirations, including what works and what does not
when engaging girls and women in information and communications technologies. While there
are many accounts highlighting the importance of why gender digital inclusion programs are
important, there is limited knowledge on how to evaluate their impact.

To accomplish gender equality, young ladies and women need equivalent admittance to
innovation, computerized preparing and to be protected on the web. Girls and women often have
less access to technology and the internet compared to boys and men. Particularly in developing
countries, girls and women free-for-all to afford technology and internet access. In addition,
stereotypes around technology being ‘for boys’ and fear of being discriminated against stop girls
from using digital tools.

Without equivalent admittance to innovation and the web, young ladies and women can't
similarly take part in our perpetually advanced social orders. Keeping down young ladies and
ladies in this space influences each part of their lives, including their capacity to stand up and
crusade on issues that influence them. Additionally, if young ladies and ladies are not engaged
with making advanced apparatuses and online substance, they might compound existing
imbalances.

Technology can also be a powerful tool for girls to become activists and lead change on
issues that affect them. Social media platforms, for instance, allow activists to reach a wide
audience and organize action towards common causes. School is often the first place where
children are introduced to technology as well as learning the literacy and numeracy skills to
make the most of these digital tools. Therefore, we ensure girls and women have equal access to
learning relevant technical skills and digital literacy in school and through training programs to
be able to take advantage of technology and digital tools.

Interpretation of Data
 Thematic analysis suggests three points of future focus for this evaluation
process: context-specific understanding of gender digital inclusion programs; transparency and
accountability of the evaluation process and its results; and tensions between evaluation targets
and empowerment of evaluation participants. However, limited available data does demonstrate
that girls face similar patterns as women, including lower access and use. UNICEF East Asia
Pacific, 2019. Gender counts. East and Southeast Asia. Available at
https://www.unicef.org/eap/reports/gender-counts-eastand-southeast-Asia, There are similar
regional variations and significant gaps in use of more sophisticated technology tools (e.g.,
smartphone access and range of use). This leaves a significant knowledge gap on the digital
realities for today’s generation of girls. Several studies have found that women tend to use
mobiles and the internet differently than men. Tyers A, and Banyan Global, 2020. USAID
Gender digital divide desk review report. Available at https://www.marketlinks.org/ weege-
wiki/gdd-desk-review report, for example, limited by less expensive and sophisticated handsets,
women use a smaller range of digital services (often primarily voice and SMS). Women also use
digital services less often and less intensively, and they access the internet less frequently, for
fewer reasons. The digital gender divide is also fuelled by digital illiteracy, which often
translates in lack of comfort in using technology and accessing the Internet. Such “technophobia”
is often a result of concurrent factors including education, employment status and income level.
For instance, Intel and Dalberg’s (2012) survey shows that more than half of the women having
no formal education said they were not familiar or comfortable with the technology. However,
this percentage fell to 15% in the case of women with at least high school education.

Finally, the ability of women to access and use digital technologies is directly and
indirectly affected by marketrelated factors including investment dynamics, regulations, and
competition, especially in rural areas. In rural areas, which are often scarcely populated, the
investment and installation of infrastructures, such as broadband infrastructures and cell phone
towers, is less economically profitable. This can affect disproportionally more women in
developing countries as they seem to be more often located in rural areas, whereas working age
men tend to be mainly in urban areas (UN Statistics, 2016). Women and girls in rural areas of
developing countries further face persistent structural constraints, including their higher
probability to be out of school than boys – their likelihood is twice as high as girls in urban areas.
Furthermore, women and girls in rural areas generally work in agriculture, and their work is
often unpaid or considered as a contribution to the family. When employed, women in rural areas
tend to have shorter term and more precarious jobs and are generally less protected than men in
rural areas or people living in urban areas (UN Women Watch, 2018). This ultimately translates
in being confined in technology-poor environments where it is difficult if not impossible to use
digital technologies, and into having scarce (if any) resources, also financial ones, to be used to
go online.

Methodological Issues

The thematic analysis suggests three points to consider for the gender digital inclusion
programmes evaluation: context-specific understanding of gender digital inclusion programmes;
transparency and accountability of the evaluation process and its results; and tensions between
evaluation targets and empowerment of evaluation participants. This result is worrisome. As the
digital transformation unfolds and progressively affects all industries, including those that are
less digital intensive at present, the fact that women are relatively less endowed with the skills
that are especially needed in the digital transformation will likely contribute to widen the already
existing gender wage gap. More research and data is needed in order to effectively design
programmes and initiatives that work to close the gender digital divide for girls. This can be
done through, for example, country or regional demand-side surveys that focus on adolescents
under the age of 18, or by integrating sexdisaggregated data on digital adoption for adolescents
into regular national surveys, or by exploring innovative approaches to data and insights, such as
big data. Context-specific research is also needed to understand girls’ digital experiences, the
security and safety risks they may face online, and any issues and fears in their community about
girls’ use of technology. Increasing girls’ digital adoption will enable them to access more digital
opportunities, be it in education, employment or civic participation. We must close the digital
divide to allow a new generation of girls to have access to these digital opportunities and to the
increasingly digital world of work.

To avoid that this happens and to try and narrow the current gender wage gap,
governments need to ensure that women are well equipped with advanced numeracy skills, and
that they are provided with the opportunity to increase their management and communication
and self-organization skills. In their current jobs, women would need to increasingly be tasked
with management and communication duties and be enabled to develop and apply their self-
organization capabilities. Figure 28 among others in fact implies that, within each detailed
occupation category considered, men are currently conducting significantly more management
and communication and self-organization tasks than women.

But why are returns to advanced numeracy and management and communication skills
higher for men than for women in digital intensive industries, and why is this not the case for
less digital intensive industries? One possible explanation relates to the women being
discriminated against with respect to their expected performance in advanced numeracy and
management and communication tasks, which might be more severe in digital intensive
industries. This could lead to contracts that pay women a lower salary, despite them having the
same skill endowments and performing the same type of tasks of their male counterparts.
Another explanation might be that male networks are stronger in digital intensive industries and
that wage bargaining outcomes and bonus payments are higher for men, in particular when it
comes to jobs that require advanced numeracy, management, and communication.

UNICEF, 2019. Digital literacy for children: exploring definitions and frameworks
(Scoping Paper No. 01). Available at https://www. ikanos.eus/wp-content/
uploads/2019/09/UNICEFDigital-Literacy-Scoping-PaperFINAL-27-Aug-2019.pdf, Education
policies should emphasize digital skills for girls as well as boys. Digital skill training should be
included in formal school curricula from primary level, so girls are reached at an early age and
can build skills over time. Education policies can also support girls’ study of STEM subjects in
inclusive and gender-neutral environments, with learning opportunities provided both inside and
outside of the classroom. Collaboration with the private sector (such as mobile operators) may
help to support digital literacy development for girls, especially for girls who may be out of
school, or live in more remote places.

Ethical Considerations

The following ethical guidelines were put into place for the research period:

Validity. The research design addresses the specific research questions. Hence, the conclusion of
the study must correlate to the questions posed and the result. Also, research ethics demand that
the methods used must relate specifically to the research questions.
Voluntary Participation and Consent. The researchers will ask permissions to the participants
or responders in the way of letter or verbal in a nice way or approach. It persuades the
respondents or the participants to cooperate with the researchers in their conducting of research.
It informs consent the responders to know if what should be the objective of the researchers to
the participants or responders.

Risks, Benefits and Safety. For the security of the participants and their psychological and
social well-being. The researchers will explain the significance of the study. It considers the
result of the study will have a positive impression of the participants. The researchers will make
sure that the conducting of survey will attain the health protocols and will set at the participants.

Confidentiality. Privacy and anonymity or respondents is of a paramount importance. The

dignity and wellbeing of students was protected at all times.

The research data remained confidential throughout the study and the researcher obtained the
students’ permission to use their real names in the research report.