According to a new study, the failure to ensure women have equal access to the internet has cost low-income countries $1 trillion (£730 billion) over the last decade and might cost them another $500 billion by 2025 if governments do nothing.
Governments in 32 countries, including India, Egypt, and Nigeria, lost an estimated $126 billion in GDP last year due to the lack of women's inability to participatefemale participation in the digital economy.
According to the analysis, the digital gender gap — the difference in the proportion of women and men who can access the internet— – will cost $24 billion in lost tax revenues in 2020, money that could have been spent on health, education, and housing.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, former executive director of UN Women and founder of the Umlambo Foundation said, "We will not achieve gender equality unless we eradicate this digital divide that keeps so many women offline and away from the benefits the internet affords."
The World Wide Web Foundation and the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) performed the survey, which looked at 32 low- and lower-middle-income nations, where the gender gap is frequently the most pronounced.
In those countries, a third of women had internet access, compared to nearly half of men. Since 2011, the digital gender gap has narrowed by half a percentage point, from 30.9 per cent to 30.4 per cent. According to the survey, men are 21 per cent more likely than women to be online globally, with the percentage climbing to 52 per cent in the least developed countries.
Various barriers prevent women and girls from going online, including high-cost handsets and data tariffs, social norms that discourage women and girls from going online, concerns about privacy, safety, and security, and a lack of financial resources— – women earn about 77 cents for every dollar earned by men globally.
According to the survey, few governments have enacted special regulations to make it easier for women to access the internet. According to the A4AI's 2020 Affordability Report, more than 40 per cent of countries have no policies or programmes in place to increase women's internet access.
Catherine Adeya, director of research at the World Wide Web Foundation said, "As the internet becomes a more potent enabler for education, business, and community mobilisation, a failure to guarantee access for all means failing to realise everyone's ability to participate."
Women's digital exclusion has broader societal and economic consequences that touch everyone; with hundreds of millions of fewer women able to use the internet, the world is missing out on the social, cultural, and economic contributions they could make, according to the research.
Boutheina Guermazi, World Bank director of digital development stated, "Investing in a more inclusive digital future gives leaders a tremendous chance to drive economic growth while promoting healthier societies by tackling inequities in education and earning power."
She further added, "Closing the digital gender gap should be one of the key priorities for governments trying to develop a resilient economy as part of their Covid-19 recovery strategies."