TECHNOLOGY by Priyanka Sharma Closing the Digital Divide for Women An estimated 70% of jobs in the U.S. require digital skills, and yet one-third of working-age Americans possess none or limited digital ability. Women are particularly vulnerable to this deficit since they are already at a wage and savings disadvantage to men. At World Education, Inc., a global nonprofit organization that advances equity through education, we support women as the backbone of families and communities. In an economy in which employers are aggressively seeking workers with digital know-how, there is a tremendous opportunity to equip women with these critical skills and change their life trajectories for themselves and their families. With access to the three pillars of digital readiness – digital training, technology devices beyond a mobile phone, and broadband – women are proven to achieve the education and job readiness needed to better financial resilience. It’s well known that women experience wage gaps – 84% of what men make – that, along with family caretaking responsibilities, impact their ability to increase their household income and improve their housing, food, healthcare and education resources benefiting their children and dependents. Take JoBeth, a student at Sitting Bull College, and mother of five children trying to obtain her GED so that she can go to college. She is one of the “learnerworkers” we reach with skills training and technology through our national Digital US network of nonprofits, businesses and associations. “I never really knew how to work a computer until I stepped into the GED© program,” she told us. A November 2021 Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) report found that digital skills are not only required for most “middle skilled” jobs – those requiring career or technical training but not a college degree – but they also add to a person’s income. Women’s vulnerability in digital and technical expertise also directly affects their family priorities. We believe that closing the digital skills gap is a powerful countervailing force to these pressures and a proven way to advance women’s economic opportunities and the education prospects for their children. Pew Research conducted in 4Q’21 found that 36% of women (versus 21% of men) had difficulty helping their children use technology and the internet for online instruction during the pandemic. Access to devices and broadband can be significant barriers since, according to the FCC, approximately 19 million Americans – 6 percent of the population – still lack access to fixed broadband service at threshold speeds. People in low-income categories experience this most acutely: 43% of adults with lower incomes, below $30,000/year, do not have home broadband services; 41% don’t have a desktop or laptop computer and roughly a quarter don’t own a smartphone. The impact of this is dramatic on parents. Pew also found that around a quarter of them (27%) said their children had to do schoolwork on a cellphone, 16% said their child was unable to complete schoolwork because of a lack of computer access at home, and another 14% said their child had to use public Wi-Fi to finish schoolwork because there was no reliable connection at home. This has a cascade of negative effects on children’s future. While many people have mobile phone access, we know students with computers in the home were more likely to graduate from high school. So how do we translate these findings into strategies that make a difference? Through WEI’s leadership in Digital US, a network we founded in 2019, and a partnership with the Upskill America @ Aspen Institute focused on upskilling and workforce readiness, we engage a network of businesses leaders to create tool kits and roadmaps for digital resilience. These are designed to prepare workers at various levels of sophistication and ensure that a company’s culture supports digital preparedness at every stage of an employee’s responsibilities. Together we tackled this issue of how to reach underemployed women and people who are marginalized by a lack of digital skills, technology or broadband. Specifically, we created our Digital Navigator Network of trained staff and volunteers from associations across the country. MJgraphics / S-Design / shutterstock.com 78 enterprising Women
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