International Women’s Day on March 8 was an important day for gender equality – also in the digital world.
A report by UN Women entitled ‘Gender equality in the digital world: progress towards true gender equality remains slow’ shows that the progress registered in this regard is uneven.
The eSkills Malta Foundation’s mission has always aimed at promoting greater equality and justice for women. The foundation is one of the leaders in Malta encouraging girls and women to consider a digital career. It calls for equal access to employment, housing, education and healthcare, and equal rights for men and women.
In fact, the foundation has commissioned various studies to facilitate this adaptation, including an ‘Analysis of the Gender gap in the Digital Sector in Malta and Guidelines to Increase and Retain Women in ICT’. But despite continuous efforts to improve women’s lives and combat gender inequality, significant improvements in terms of gender equality in technology have not been made.
To further ensure and promote equal treatment and opportunities for women and men in all areas, including participation in the labour market, the European Pillar of Social Rights was set up. To turn these words into action, the European Commission adopted a series of legal measures to improve the work-life balance for working parents and their careers.
The representation of women in management positions is also affected in many sectors, with less than one-third of the managers of listed companies in the EU being women. The shadow of a pandemic and the gender-based violence is not helping the situation. This is thankfully widely reported and discussed in the media and will continue to be discussed elsewhere.
Although attention to gender statistics has increased in recent decades, the ability to effectively track progress toward global goals is challenging for many countries for several reasons, including inconsistent coverage of gender indicators and targets.
For example, UN Women has found that only one-third of global gender equality data can be classified as Tier 1. Tier 1 is a classification determined by the Inter-Agency Expert Group, meaning that it can be reliably monitored at global level. While 17 indicators are still being developed, “coverage is patchy or insufficient to allow for global monitoring”.
Given the rapid progress of science, the ability to create and shape technological change has become a fundamental tool to support women’s empowerment and improve their lives. Progress has been made towards gender parity over the last 100 years but women can only achieve true equality if men share responsibility to raise the next generation.
We need to continue to promote women’s cybersecurity and we need to be able to lift more women up by giving them opportunities. It is not just about gender equality in cybersecurity, but also in other areas such as education, health and education reform, and in the workplace, and we all need to take action to create one that does not discriminate against women.
Twenty-five years have passed since the adoption of the ‘Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action’, but how close are we really to gender equality?
The report shows how public services can be expanded to meet women’s rights, ranging from improving access to contraception and childcare, to reducing domestic violence, to increasing women’s participation in politics and peace work.
The report also proves that positive change is possible despite the unprecedented global challenges, as demonstrated by the success of countries such as the United States, China, India, South Africa and Brazil, which have achieved the highest levels of gender parity in health and education.
We need to look more closely at women’s progress in their rights holistically. Cybersecurity is the one of latest areas, but other segments of human rights indicate that we still have a long way to go.
The eSkills Malta Foundation’s abovementioned studies may be viewed on its website below.
This article was prepared by collating various publicly available online sources.
Claude Calleja, Executive, eSkills Malta Foundation