Queen mother of the Asogli State, Mama Bobi III is making a case for why equal opportunities in the digital space can not be a panacea to bridging the gender divide in the digital space.
As Ghana joins the rest of the world to commemorate International women’s day on the theme, “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”, the traditional ruler who also doubles as a Circuit court judge and Transformative Leadership for women’s rights champion, is calling for conversations on equity rather than equality. In her estimation, providing equal opportunities will only seek to rather widen the existing gap.
Below is her full statement on the occasion of IWD 2023.
The theme for International Women’s Day, 2023 (IWD 2023) is, “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”. Uniquely, the theme brings into line a priority theme for the impending 67th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls”. As a woman, I stand in the gap for all who may not be able to address and have the platform to talk about the critical issues of the digital divide and technology’s double-edged-ness.
The IWD 2023 campaign theme resonates with a gender-responsive approach to innovation, technology, and digital education. In the case of Ghana, we can say that if we take this gender—responsive approach to education, then we can ensure a future where women and girls will be aware of their rights and civic engagement. Obviously, to achieve the 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals, deliberate women’s participation in digital technology will offer immense prospects to address our development challenges. However, realizing that the prospects of digital transformation may also present a risk of spreading existing patterns of gender inequality, I will call for us to create a space to talk about why ‘equal opportunities are often not enough’ in our technology expansions.
My concern is that growing inequalities are becoming gradually obvious in the context of most sub-Saharan African women’s access to technologies and digital skills. Most women in this part of the world are being left behind because of this digital gender divide. Thus, when we talk about equity instead of equality, we will be able to embrace the fact that each person, each woman, has different conditions and must thus be allocated the resources and opportunities, if the need be, to reach an equal outcome. With equity, we should be able to come to terms with the fact that the need for gender inclusion in transformative technology and digital education is crucial for a sustainable future when an equitable space is provided because some conditions restrict others to attain the same goals of digitalization.
Surely, the United Nations’ call to observe 2023 IWD under the theme, “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”, is remarkable. In part, it brings together technologists, innovators, entrepreneurs, and gender equality activists to provide an opening to focus on stakeholders’ role in enhancing access to digital tools. However, the theme also calls us to confront the issue of gender in a logical and commonsensical way. Every gender is intersectional, and we must avoid uniform ways of addressing women’s concerns and interests because, even as a group, women are diverse in many ways. For instance, a policy decision that may benefit a woman who is a politician or judge, may not benefit a woman who is a trader or teacher or a girlchild in the city of Accra or a rural area outside Accra due to socio-historical conditions they found themselves . Therefore, I will invite my fellow women, (and men who know the relevance of women in national development) to have a mental and paradigm shift in addressing women in general terms by focusing on the process of gender equity which is needed for meaningful progress in Ghana.
Close to my heart is also the issue of gender inclusion. With all the women and girls out there, it is time for us to get the world talking about our wounded planet when it comes inclusion in all possible ways. The lack of inclusion in technology and digital life, by contrast, comes with considerable costs. For instance, in the UN Women’s Gender Snapshot 2022 report, it was highlighted that women’s exclusion from the digital ecosystem deprived low and middle-income countries, including Ghana, an amount of $1 trillion from their gross domestic product in the past decades. Of course, the $1 trillion amount will just grow without any meaningful action.
Consequently, the 2023 IWD theme encourages us to also rethink leadership and practical problems facing women today. For instance, when we talk about the impact of Ghana’s digital gender gap on economic and social lifestyles such as problems of online violence, Fintech, coding, programming, etc., we are miserable. But I believe that such challenges facing the Ghanaian today can be handled with an equity-based solution. This is because with equity-based solutions, we will be able to consider the diverse lived experiences of individual women and groups in their unique communities, so as to adjust programmes and services in view of these differences. Inasmuch as bringing women and other side-lined groups into technology has the potential to inspire creative answers and has greater potential for innovations that meet women’s needs and promote gender-responsive technology, the equity-based solution could bring in more women and girls in digital spaces and address online and ICT-enabled gender-based violence.
Hence, to add to the UN’s good intention for the 2023 IWD, I will also call for action-based and sustainable solutions for our future as a nation, and any visionary leadership should be able to use this equity-based solution to address identifiable unfair structures.
As we celebrate the women and girls who are advocating the progress of technology and digital education, and to all women and girls out there whose digital lifestyle is non-existence, I will say as we DigitALL, we should start tackling the issue of equity in access to technology as well. In particular, when equality as Susan Gardner puts it, “…is giving everyone a shoe. Equity is giving everyone a shoe that fits”.