Since the spread of the Internet is worldwide, it is to be promised that it remains as common place for everyone. Everyone in the sense it will be inclusive of all races, cultures, and even all genders. According to an article published at the ITU titled “Bridging the Gender Divide”[1] it is propounded that around 2.7 Billion people around the world are yet to connect to the internet and among them, the major chunk is women and girls. At the global level in 2022, there are around 62% of men are using the Internet as compared to 57% of their female counterparts. It is worth mentioning here that even though the internet has helped the LGBTQ++ community in their organization and development but still there is a lack of cumulative data at the world level for calculating their numbers for internet users.
If we may enquire about the reasons of women and the LGBTQ+ community are less represented in the users list we get the following reasons:
- Lack of digital infrastructure
- Attached social stigma which considers women and persons from the LGBTQ+ community as second-grade citizens.
- Lack of formal and digital education among both groups.
- Missing political will to push and pull the members of both groups into the mainstream.
- Lack of sufficient Socio, Political, and Economic leadership among women and LGBTQ+ members.
- Fear of getting victimized, trolled, and bullied on the internet keeps them away from using the internet at their full potential.
Due to these reasons, on the one hand, World is experiencing the advanced waves of the internet in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT, etc., and on the other hand, the world has to deal with the issue of digital exclusion, digital underdevelopment and digital negligence of its almost half of the population which is majorly represented by Women and Girls and very minutely represented by the LGBTQ+ community.
To cater to this problem of the Digital Divide from the perspective of gender we have to take immediate steps, which can be summarized as follows:
- Ensuring proper and capable digital infrastructure is in place to address the demand of learning and performing various digital operations by women, girls, and the LGBTQ+ community.
- The change in the attitude of society will be a major help for this community to ensure their digital rights.
- Providing necessary skill training in the digital spheres for the members of these disadvantaged groups so that instead of getting victimized by the internet they will get benefitted from the internet.
- Gathering the necessary Political will through ensuring constructive support from the policymakers and political leaders for the cause of digital inclusion of these groups.
- Creation of a group of change agents among women and the LGBTQ+ community by providing them with skill and leadership training and other necessary support. They will act as torchbearers for the whole community for ensuring their digital rights.
- To ensure the digital inclusion of women, girls, and members of the LGBTQ+ community the Public, Private, and Voluntary sectors should work in tandem.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) number 5 deals with ensuring ‘Gender Equality’ and number 10 emphasizes ‘Reduced Inequalities’ will be achieved by the efforts of ensuring just gender inclusion in Internet Governance.
[1] https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/backgrounders/Pages/bridging-the-gender-divide.aspx