Women’s Rights Online

Africa’s offline gender gap is getting repeated online

June 12, 2018

This post was written by Nanjira Sambuli (@NiNanjira) and originally published at SciDev.net. Half the world will be online by the end of 2018, according to our estimates at the WebRead more

Measuring women’s connectivity: A toolkit for researching access and use

June 4, 2018

As more of the world’s population comes online, we know that internet growth across the globe has been unequal. Not only are women less likely to be connected, they also use the internet inRead more

Related Research

A toolkit for researching women’s internet access and use

May 25, 2018

While an increasing number of people are now using the internet, the lack of comparable and accurate gender disaggregated data obscures the true extent of the differences in access to, and use ofRead more

React with gender-responsive ICT Policy

January 9, 2018

Leaders around the globe have declared their commitment to making universal, affordable internet access a reality for all, but no country will achieve universal internet access withoutRead more

More About This Project

Internet access offers a powerful avenue for people around the world to assert their rights and to claim social, economic and political opportunities for empowerment. Yet, half the world’s population remains offline

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most of them women, and most in developing countries. Recent research shows that this persistent, pernicious digital gender gap is worsening — a fact that threatens to deepen existing inequalities and to undermine global development as the benefits of technological change are captured primarily by men. Our Women’s Rights Online network is working to reverse this trend by focusing its efforts on impacting the policy needed to bridge the gender gap in technology, data, and policymaking. Comprising women’s rights and digital rights groups across 17 low- and middle-income countries, the network wants to see evidence-based national ICT and gender plans established in at least seven new countries within the next five years.