Home ›› 09 Mar 2023 ›› Back
This year’s International Women’s Day was celebrated globally yesterday under the theme “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality.”
The United Nations (UN) and its entity UN Women called on governments, activists and the private sector alike to make the digital world safer, more inclusive and more equitable.
Bangladesh is still lagging in employing women in the technology sector, despite doing well in some indicators like education. This shows that the country is yet to reach the bar to achieve Sustainable Development Goal No 5, which advocates for annihilating gender discrimination in all fields.
IT sector insiders say societal stereotype against women is the main reason behind this scenario. Also, the lower penetration of electronic devices and the internet among women is creating a digital divide and obstructing women’s empowerment.
According to the latest IDLC research report, only 12 per cent of women are working in the country’s information technology sector and most of them are working either at the primary level or mid-level.
A Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) report also suggested that around 25 per cent of females only enrol for Computer Science or Information Communication Technology (ICT) related subjects, whereas only 13 per cent of female professionals end up joining the ICT industry.
STEM subjects, which comprise science, technology, engineering and mathematics, are still perceived as male subjects.
Long way to go
“The ICT sector has made some progress. Women have started coming in but the number is still low and growing very slowly,” said Rezwana Khan, president of Bangladesh Women in Technology (BWIT) — the largest forum for consolidating, developing and growing women in the tech industry.
“We get fewer women applicants compared to men when we recruit IT professionals. They very often don’t think IT sector as an option after graduating. Awareness has to be created by family and society,” she said.
Rezwana, also the managing director of Star Computer Systems Limited, said, “For women, the main problem is capital. A girl member of a family cannot manage capital for starting a business as easily as a male member. I come from a business family. Even I had to fight against this problem.”
“Banks don’t want to give loans to IT firms because it is complicated to prove that IT firms are SMEs and deserve loan sanctions. On top of that, we need to go to different divisions and bodies, and sometimes we even need a male person to deal with these issues,” she complained.
Although the government provides 15 per cent of SME funding for women, those working in the IT sector still face tough situations to get it, she said. A collective effort from the government, professionals, academics and industry is now a must to bring more women into ICT. Maybe arrangements could be made at the policymaking level which would require organisations to recruit a certain number of women, Rezwana added.
Talking to The Business Post, BM Mainul Hossain, professor at Dhaka University’s Institute of Information Technology, said that about 20 per cent of students in IT and ICT-related subjects at both public and private universities are female.
The rate of women’s participation has drastically gone down over the past few years maybe because they are not getting the proper environment, he said.
According to an ICT Division survey, there is a dearth of mid-range women professionals in the industry. Companies are not giving them leadership positions and policy support is needed to ensure women the positions they deserve.
Authorities should find out the reasons and take steps while companies should understand the scenario better, he added.
Thousands of women are doing business via digital platforms, but now they need DBID, trade licences, etc. and these are barriers for them, Mainul said, adding authorities should facilitate their venture instead of creating such bars.
IT participation growing, not entrepreneurs
Female participation in the country’s IT sector has grown gradually thanks to freelancing jobs, which allows them to choose projects and enjoy flexible work hours.
Dhaka-based freelancer Alifa Zerin said, “I started freelancing through Fiverr and Upwork five years ago. Since then, I have worked in seven such international marketplaces.”
More and more women are entering the freelancing market because of the flexibility on time and location and the freedom to choose clients or projects, she said.
According to the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Service (BASIS), around 2,000 IT firms are BASIS members but only 1 per cent of them are owned by women. The number of women holding top posts at IT companies is also very small.
“Some 1.5 lakh women currently work in the software and ITES industry, which is around 15 per cent of the total,” BASIS President Russell T Ahmed told The Business Post.
Women’s participation in this sector is quite good but what we now need is more female entrepreneurs because their current number is much lower than what the industry needs, he stressed.
Entrepreneur Syeda Khadiza Dina, the CEO of IT firm ZS Solutions Ltd, said, “It’s still very difficult for a woman-led tech firm to gain the trust of clients. I have faced questions like whether I inherited the company from my father or I manage it because my husband owns it.”
“When it comes to getting any services like trade licence or SME certifications, I still have to send a man to deal with it. This is a major barrier for my firm,” she added.
E-commerce and F-commerce
According to the Women and e-Commerce Forum (WE), the country has more than 4 lakh female entrepreneurs who run F-Commerce (businesses based on Facebook) and e-commerce-based businesses.
The forum also has over 1,000 women entrepreneurs as subscribers and more than 11 lakh members in its Facebook group.
Banks do not want to give loans to women who do business via online platforms like Facebook as they do not have the necessary documents. This is holding them back from becoming proper entrepreneurs, said WE President Nasima Aktar Nisha.
She said that many families do not want their female members to become entrepreneurs if their business is based on ICT or digital platforms. “This type of mindset needs to change.”
Gender gap widening
According to the Time Use Survey 2021 conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and UN Women Bangladesh, 21.25 per cent of internet users are women and 35.15 per cent are men — with a gender gap of around 39.54 per cent.
Around 72.74 per cent of the survey respondents — 59.92 per cent women and 86.1 per cent men — had mobile phones, it said.
Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar told The Business Post that the gender gap was a reflection of the social and economic structures prevailing in Bangladesh.
A family wants to take care of its female members after the needs of males are met. That is why girls are not given electronic devices. The government has spread 4G services across the country and made devices affordable to bring everyone under the IT ecosystem, he said.
“Although the IT sector is very promising for women, their participation is still very low,” said Samira Zuberi Himika, senior vice president of BASIS Women’s Forum.
She said, “Women’s participation in the ICT sector has to increase and for this, we need to start incorporating skills from a very early stage of their lives, preferably from the primary education level.”
The government has already taken multiple projects like “Leveraging ICT for Growth” and “She Power,” creating thousands of women leaders in the IT sector.
At an event on Monday, Speaker of Bangladesh Parliament Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury said the government is implementing a Tk 250-crore project to create 25,000 smart women entrepreneurs in the country.
Under the project, necessary training and Tk 20,000 each as capital will be provided to these women entrepreneurs. They will be a supportive force to build Smart Bangladesh, she said.
