The Programmes Manager with the Institutional Development Programme at the Media Foundation for West Africa, Dora Mawutor has called on women in the country to embrace and harness the power of digital technologies to promote empowerment amongst women.
According to research, the proportion of women using the Internet globally is 48 percent as against 58 percent of men.
This reveals that women are still trailing men in benefiting from the transformational power of digital technologies.
However, speaking at a day’s workshop organized by the media foundation for West Africa for women Journalist in the Western and Central region under the theme “Women Right online and Digital Literacy”, Dora Mawutor said it has become necessary for women to close- in the digital gap to ensure equitable access of opportunities and use of the Internet.
She explained that with the situation in Ghana “a report that was done in October 2020 shows that the gender gap between men and women is about 5.8%. Though it may look small as compared to other countries when you look at meaningful access which covers issues of high-end digital devices and high-speed data and the skill to use it and when you look at the gap is actually 14%. This means that even though we are closing the gap, there is still a lot to be done.”
She attributed the factors that contribute to this gap to issues of unreliable connectivity, high cost of data, digital literacy as well as the issues accessibility to these technologies.
Paramount among these factors she explained is on online safety “particularly in terms of harassment cyberbullying, body shaming, pornography among others and so we hope that with this capacity building we create some awareness for the women to take precautionary measures when they go online.”
She, therefore, admonished women to be responsible online and report any form of cyber abuse to the appropriate government authorities for redress.
Source: Herty Ann Hawkson/ATLFMNEWS
