Chelsea Clinton: Internet Access is Key to Gender Equaility
Source: Wired
ISSIE LAPOWSKY
ON ISSUES FROM education and healthcare to discrimination and leadership, the status of women and girls worldwide has improved dramatically over the last two decades. The maternal mortality rate has dropped by half, and the number of boys and girls with access to primary education has nearly balanced out.
But as a report compiled by the Clinton Foundation and Gates Foundation confirms, we’ve still got a long—long—way to go to fully close the gender gap worldwide. The report, released today, is a product of No Ceilings, an initiative the Clinton Foundation launched last year in hopes of taking stock of what’s changed since 1995. Its findings comprise 850,000 data points, spanning a 20-year period, collected over the years by the United Nations, The World Bank, and other research and non-profit organizations. By pulling from so many disparate sources, the report signals an important shift for non-profits, which are finally coming around to an idea that the tech industry has long embraced: to solve any big problems, you need big data.
Some of the most stunning findings revealed by that data have to do with women’s access to technology and their opportunity for economic advancement, two often linked issues. For instance, the report found that in the developing world, some 200 million fewer women than men use the internet and 300 million fewer women own a mobile phone. That’s significant, Chelsea Clinton explained in an interview with WIRED, because, “In places where women have more equal access to mobile technology, they’re more able to secure loans, for example. Where that’s not true, women often face more significant barriers.”
In fact, the research shows that among women in the developing world who do use the internet, 30 percent report earning additional income, 45 percent report searching for jobs, and 80 percent report improving their education. “Ensuring access to technology and particularly mobile technology so those women can engage with platforms privately is a big focus of the work ahead,” Clinton said.
FULL story at link. Also see: Gender equality report: an example of how big data can address big problems: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0309/Gender-equality-report-an-example-of-how-big-data-can-address-big-problems
Chelsea Clinton. Brennan Linsley/AP
Read more: http://www.wired.com/2015/03/chelsea-clinton-no-ceilings/
= new reply since forum marked as read
