This document discusses barriers that prevent women in developing countries from accessing and using digital technologies. It notes that factors like cost, literacy, safety concerns, and social norms often interact with poverty to exclude as much as 80% of the population, mostly women, from being online. While digital access could help alleviate poverty, women generally have fewer opportunities to use technologies than men due to cultural and socioeconomic reasons. If this gap is not addressed, women risk further marginalization. The document advocates addressing core issues that prohibit women's tech use through strategies like pairing tech initiatives with other programs, ensuring safety, using local role models and languages, promoting confidence, and employing both online and offline approaches.

1. SHRINKING THE GENDERDIGITAL
DIVIDE
Revi Sterling, Ph.D.
USAID WomenConnect Challenge
revi_sterling@dai.com

2. Known barriers to women’s use
of technology
• Cost
• Literacy
• Digital literacy
• Time
• Mobility
• Perceived relevance
• Safety
• Self-esteem/self-efficacy
• Social Norms
Poverty and gender interact to
keep as much as 80% of the
population — mostly women —
offline in some developing
countries. –
A4AI

3. The unbalanced equation:
◦ Women’s advancement is key to poverty alleviation in all forms
◦ Digital technology can be a powerful tool in poverty alleviation
◦ Women do not have the same opportunities to use digital
technology as men do, for a variety of cultural and
socioeconomic reasons
◦ If women continue to be excluded from the benefits of
technology access and use, they will be further marginalized
◦ Where is this often played out? Agriculture.

4. The women you want to reach
aren’t using your app
◦ They don’t have (good enough) smartphones
◦ They had a phone but it’s gone
◦ They don’t know it exists
◦ They did use it but now they don’t
◦ Apps are a pain
◦ Good women don’t use mobiles
◦ The App and phone “don’t speak the language”
◦ It’s expensive – hidden costs
◦ They feel “dumb”
◦ We don’t meet women “where they are” – WhatsApp,
offline/online hybrids

5. What doesn’t work
◦ How we are currently counting
◦ Generic ICT & women training
◦ Hackathons
◦ Smartphones
◦ Low relevance content
◦ Form factors that don’t fit
◦ No IRL gender equity
◦ Lack of deep cultural context

6. What works:
◦ Work with those in power
◦ Find the right conditions
◦ Relevance to lives
◦ Voice and text-free UI
◦ Creative cost structure
◦ Creating new social norms
◦ Pre-ICT skills
◦ Leading with societal concerns
◦ Emerging tech/AI

7. The real reason we can’t get the last several hundreds of
millions of women online comes down to fact there are people
in their community who don’t want them online.
Uncover core
issues that prohibit
women’s tech use
Pair with nutrition,
health, ed…
Must address
safety/online
GBV
Have avatars and
e-role models that
look like neighbors
Create confidence-
building
opportunities with
AgTech
Text-free
interfaces: Voice,
video, IVR
Promote positive
deviance
Offline and non-
traditional Digital
Dev tools
Very Specifically

8. https://bit.ly/3928BwA

9. REVI_STERLING@DAI.COM