Technology and innovation for gender equality, what’s the way forward

Rwanda acknowledges the potential role of ICT in driving women's inclusion and linking them to opportunities.

 

Digital technologies and digital tools allow ubiquitous access to information, education, and foster innovation.

 

Hence, Rwanda's approach to bridging the gender digital divide has been focused on universal access, digital skills for all, and digital innovation for women empowerment.

 

Marie Chantal, a final year medical student at University of Rwanda is one of those who have decided to break the ceiling in the technology field through changing history by bringing innovation to health that aims at ensuring the wellbeing of the Rwandan population.

 

The 27- year old is the founder and Managing Director of Umubyeyi Elevate, a digital health startup that makes information on maternal health, child health, and parenting accessible to the major public using technology tools and community engagement.

 

“My story is that of a girl who grew up with a passion to save lives and serve the community from an early age. As I grew up I knew there was no better choice but to follow a science path at all costs," she says.

 

 

Although women are highly advancing, she says there are still low numbers in sciences.

 

Being a medical student, a mother, an enterprise owner, and a chief executive officer, she says all these are highly demanding jobs, and this is proof that every woman can always achieve what they set their mind to.

 

Henriette Niragire a chief chemist /quality control manager at LuNa Smelter, a mining company and Rwandan tin smelting plant located in Kigali is also one of the few women who have defied odds to work in male-dominated fields.

 

She uses digital laboratory techniques to supervise the entire laboratory procedure at the company.

 

According to The National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda- Labour Force Survey 2018, there are still considerable gaps in women's participation in the mining and quarrying sectors.

 

For instance, women make up only 5.8 percent in the mining and quarrying sector compared to 94.2percent males; 14.6 percent in the construction sector compared to 85.4p percent, and 3.0 percent in the transportation and storage compared to 97.0percent.

 

 To Niragire, hard work and determination is what is needed to make it, in whatever career you choose to do regardless of your gender.

 

 

Gender equality and innovation in Rwanda

 

 Bridge gender digital divide and attain parity in access, usage, and innovation and Triple girls’ enrolment in TVET (ICT is one of the courses under TVET) were part of 2015 HeForShe commitments of HE Paul Kagame, to boost women’s and girls’ employability to the labor markets.

 

 Silas Ngayaboshya, Director General for Gender Promotion and Women's Empowerment at MIGEPROF says this explores how technology and innovation can help advance gender equality and create new solutions responding to women's and girl's needs in all their diversity.

 

He says gender-sensitive laws have been enacted including matrimonial regimes, donation, and successions, land access as well as the prevention and punishment of Gender-Based Violence, and criminalize GBV offenses among others to promote Gender Equality and women rights.

 

Among other efforts, policies have been also developed and others revised to address the persisting challenges that limit women and girls to enjoy their rights and embrace their opportunities.

For example, currently, the National Gender Policy has been revised to stress and strengthen the role of men and boys in gender equality promotion and women empowerment.

 

Generation equality, a global gathering for gender equality, convened by UN Women was also created to launch a series of concrete, ambitious and transformative actions to achieve immediate and irreversible progress towards gender equality.

 

It is made of some Action Coalitions and GoR is a co-lead under Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality coalition.

 

Challenges still prevail

 

John Bosco Murangira, gender equality, and women empowerment advocate says technology still eludes many women and girls mostly in rural areas, whereby key challenges need to be unlocked like access to the handset, uplifting women’s level of literacy/ICT  is quite still a challenge.

 

He says deliberate innovation programs and initiatives to expand networks in rural areas, as well as effective targeted training for women, are critical to trigger and advance innovations and ICT access for women and girls.

 

Juliet Mbabazi, founder of Real Innovations-Kigali says the ability for women to access technology is the main breakthrough because it has allowed easier access to information, which is empowering and offers more choices in life.

The challenge she says comes in when women and girls don't see themselves as equal players in society due to the perpetual cultural conditioning, which starts at home and trickles down to other areas in society.

Stephen Rulisa,a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Rwanda, college of medicine agrees that locally, there is a lot to be done especially at the policy level to promote equality and specifically empower women and girls.

He notes that when policies are in place, next is to put up enablers to make sure that everyone understands them the same way, and especially empower girls psychologically that they are as good and bits if not better in some areas.

Also, he says the implementation at the household level for parents to raise all children the same needs to be done.

There is also a need to intentionally help girls to get into some jobs positions and once there prove that they can be as good this would act as a role model.

Jean Desire Habiyambere, CEO and founder of Training Hub Ltd, Kigali says culture and mindset still prevail as many people have myths that the tech industry is difficult and challenging for ladies.

 Sylvie Nsanga, a social cluster digitalization specialist believes that there is also a need to look into unpaid care work; this is especially true for female employees.

Here, she says this is something many people don’t understand yet it has been documented for so many years. 

Women don’t demand to be paid for unpaid care work, but there is a need for unpaid care work to be recognized as work, which is contributing to the country’s development, she says, adding that, it needs to be distributed among both sexes so that men also take and share the burden

 She adds that digitalization can also mitigate some of the hardships of unpaid care work women are going through.

“Equipping them with digitalization skills can be of help as it will help them sail through some of these hardships with ease,” she says.