When governments across the world imposed restrictions on people’s movement to try and limit the spread of COVID-19, many activities were suddenly forced to move online. This included the delivery of a number of government services. 

While the rapid shift to digital platforms enabled many people around the world to continue to study and work despite movement restrictions, it also revealed significant disparities and gave rise to new inequalities. Across the Global South, a number of intersecting factors limited the ability of women and girls in particular to make full use of digital technologies. These obstacles threatened to exacerbate their marginalisation. 

Through an initiative launched early in 2021, Southern Voice therefore set out, with three research teams based in India, Peru, and Tanzania, to investigate the impact that rapid digitalization was having on the inclusive delivery of key public services. 

In India, researchers from the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) looked at secondary public schools. In particular, they sought to understand the extent to which learning was being disrupted using a gender lens. With 89% of public secondary school girls surveyed in the Delhi area reporting an unsatisfactory learning experience, CBGAs recommendations considered both what will be needed to ensure a needs-based recovery in secondary education and what limitations should be considered in the development of more resilient education systems. 

In Peru, the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP) focused  on the challenges of online learning, this time at the tertiary level. Research revealed a web of intersecting factors that would create,a significantly different remote learning experience for male and female learners. Key obstacles to adequate  online learning included internet access and connectivity, but also sociocultural norms that disadvantage women.

In Tanzania, the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Research Organization (STIPRO) examined how the digitalisation of business registration services impacted SMEs’ activities during the pandemic. While they are “the backbone of Global South economies”, they are also those with the most limited digital capabilities. Research further revealed that many of these SME owners were women heads of households. The research team highlighted areas of priority action to address the gendered drivers of disparity in use of digital services. 

Based on these case studies, a set of three briefs, published in 2022, then captured cross-cutting lessons. These were designed to inform, at the global level, policies fit to address the specific dimensions of the digital divide restricting access to key services for:

Evidence, overall, showed that rapid digitalisation during COVID-19 meant considerable disruption for education, requiring a thorough evaluation of current learning levels. Yet it also signals a sudden global transformation in how we connect, which is likely to become part of a new norm. In this sense, understanding how to make this increasingly digitalised future work for everyone—especially for those most excluded—is crucial.

In this synthesis, we sought to extract the key implications of this project’s research, regarding the medium-to-long-term future of fragilised education systems, and the development of an inclusive digital space. 

Rapid digitalisation in education during COVID-19

Before the pandemic, education systems across the Global South were already struggling to achieve meaningful progress towards quality education for all. Even where significant gains were made in terms of enrollment, there were persistent disparities in outcomes. 

During the pandemic, relatively prolonged school closures across the world meant that students’ ability to learn became contingent on digital access and use. For example, being able to connect to the internet, having access to a device for a prolonged period of time, making use of the device, finding a suitable learning space, and finding learning support in their household. Learning was also affected by teachers’ ability to provide quality instruction, depending for example on whether they had sufficient training and/or digital connectivity. 

As a result, for some students, learning effectively stopped during the pandemic. Women and girls were among the hardest hit. For example, evidence from secondary schools in India, and tertiary institutions in Peru, showed that socio-cultural gendered norms had a considerable impact on the ability of female students to keep up with learning. Overall, they experienced more surveillance and control over their use of digital tools when staying at home, mainly due to negative perceptions of the internet among other family members. Sometimes, increased household and care responsibilities also significantly limited the time they were able to dedicate to their education.  

Currently, there are calls for post-pandemic levels of learning to be assessed, to inform future responses. Understanding the gendered dimension of post-pandemic disparities in education levels will be critical in ensuring the impacts of this crisis do not trickle down and affect future opportunities.

Towards an inclusive digital future 

It is expected that governments will increasingly seek to use digital tools and technologies to enhance public service delivery. In this context, we sought to understand how rapid digitalisation impacted access to key public services among women and girls in the South, to identify the key obstacles to an inclusive digital future. 

Across the Global South, only 41% of women have access to the internet. Moreover, as evidence gathered in this project revealed, this does not translate into 41% of women being able to fully benefit from the opportunities offered by digital technologies. Barriers to accessing digital services in general include irregular access to electricity, the cost of mobile devices, and the cost of the internet. Women experience greater difficulties in covering these costs, therefore policies aimed at reducing operating costs and enhancing means of public access are key factors in promoting digital inclusion, particularly for women.

Women’s access to digital services is also mediated by socio-cultural factors, such as gender norms which impact, for example, time use and levels of awareness about the benefits of using digital tools and services. These norms are difficult to overcome and require sustained, targeted interventions. 

In addition, women face persistent risks of harassment and other harmful behaviours in digital space, making online safety a significant precondition for inclusive online spaces and services. Therefore, context-specific socio-cultural variables must be transversal to all policies. These should be focused on tackling gender stereotypes that negatively affect women’s participation in digital settings, in addition to supporting the participation of women and girls in the production of digital tools and spaces. 

Finally, the ability of governments to successfully use information and communications technology (ICT) to deliver public services depends on actions at the demand level, involving community participation. When appropriate, this will mean local authorities or collective action initiatives becoming more engaged in the digitisation process. 

The digital divide is a complex, multidimensional problem, and data gathering is a key part of any attempt to address it. Specifically, successful policies and initiatives in this area will require contextualised, gender-disaggregated, timely data on digital access.

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