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Women was considered weaker of the two genders are gradually proving wrong. Women in the progressive world are increasing their potential, seizing opportunities where women in the global south is long considered as religious cultural taboos, social barriers creating obstacles and removing them to start small scale business. But there has a shift in the society about women’s role in the economy. Women should be treated equally like their counterparts for social and economic benefits.
Women’s empowerment is gradually taking over in South Asia despite having differences among nations. South Asia has made a tremendous progress in reducing gender gap and is only 34% away from obtaining gender parity. Bangladesh has done immense progress among seven nations in closed about 72 percent of the gender divide which is the top displaying Asian rankings thus making a significant difference with the other nations.
Among the 17 SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) developed by United Nations (UN) gender equality and empowerment of women and girls is one of the crucial. Women empowerment is defined as a process whereby women can make their own choices, control resources to take challenges eliminating subordination thus increasing their own self- reliance.
Women empowerment brings immense benefits such as improved household welfare, reduced poverty, better education hence impacting the whole social and fiscal health of nations. Empowering women in emerging economies will not only improve household welfare but will also positively impact the social and fiscal health of nations.
One potential instrument to enable women empowerment in emerging economies is that of information communications technology (ICT) which is a big term that include all devices and applications, such as personal Computers, mobile phones, and social media applications.
ICT has simplified and doing huge contribution in terms of economic competitiveness and long-term sustained economic growth. With the help of Innovative technologies new women entrepreneurs are emerging which helping women to transform their social, political, and economic lives leading to new opportunities for growth and development.
This year UN women’s day theme is DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality” which focuses on Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls”.
Women and other marginalized is emphasized to include technology which create more opportunities for innovation and creative ideas otherwise it created a massive cost around $1 trillion from the low- and middle-income countries. In addition, to achieve 2030 sustainable development goals also requires the implication of advance digital technology where gender inequality is evident as women are still left behind of access to digital skills and technology.
The need for transformative and inclusive technology and digital education is therefore crucial for a sustainable future.
To achieve the SDG goals and to empower women Bangladesh government initiated The WIFI scheme which aims to enhance women entrepreneurs’ ICT skills and capacity so that they can plan and operate their businesses more efficiently. Since the start of the WIFI initiative more than 5,300 women entrepreneurs have been taught and encouraged even during pandemic the training continued online to help women entrepreneurs take advantage of ICT for the technological innovation and creative solutions thus making them empowered and reducing the gender gap.
Lack of access to finance, lack of knowledge and access to technological skills and expertise, lack of training, lack of financial literacy knowledge including others are some of the crucial challenges that requires more attention to deal with. Therefore, gender gap and women empowerment can be achieved with the help of technological and innovation and education in the current era of digital age.
Tania Akter, Senior Lecturer, BRAC Business School, BRAC University, tania.akter@bracu.ac.bd
