The theme of 2024’s International Girls in ICT Day on 25 April is leadership, focusing on the need to empower and inspire girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Without the opportunity to access information and communications technology (ICT), girls cannot develop the skills they need to advance in fields such as software development, engineering, technology research, and academia, in which women are considerably under-represented.
Although young people are at the forefront of increasing use of ICT, there is relatively little research on the compounding nature and effects of gender inequality and ICT use in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and the implications for girls’ participation and leadership. In many countries, there remain significant gender gaps in young people’s use of these technologies, compounding gender inequalities and placing girls at risk of being left behind as societies and economies digitise. As observed in a new book led by the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) programme, Young people in the Global South: voice, agency and citizenship, online spaces are also increasingly significant for young people’s access to information about social issues, collective engagement and participation, and political organising – especially in contexts where civic space is constrained.
Exploring how gender shapes Bangladeshi adolescents’ participation in online spaces, Pragyna Mahpara, Sahida Islam Khondaker and Taslima Aktar’s chapter in the book highlights how Bangladeshi adolescents and young people articulate claims to rights and demand that their voices be heard, by participating in organised civic movements against injustice. Yet their participation remains limited in these spaces because of the relatively few formal platforms available in Bangladesh for adolescent civic and political engagement. By contrast, access to the internet and digital technologies allows adolescents to use social media platforms to mobilise against injustice.
Eighty per cent of people in Bangladesh use the internet, and the country has some of the world’s highest rates of mobile phone users, but access is shaped by inequalities based on age and gender. The gender gap in mobile phone usage in Bangladesh is the second highest in the world, and men are twice as likely to use the internet as women. The vast majority (95%) of people who do not use the internet because they lack permission to do so are female – most of them girls and young women aged between 15 and 24. Given these barriers, the authors examine adolescent girls’ and young women’s online participation, and the skills that they develop to champion social justice issues, both online and offline. A central objective of the research was to explore how class and gender differences affect adolescents’ access to certain types of mobilisation opportunities and platforms, and the consequences for their civic engagement. Three case studies are explored in the chapter: the 2018 road safety movement addressing the impact of poor road safety on young people; the murder of a young woman who had spoken out about sexual harassment in religious schools; and rising rates of gendered cybercrime and online violence targeting young women.
The authors find that adolescent girls were largely unable to participate in person in protests about social issues due to gender norms constraining their mobility – but that they were active in speaking up and sharing content in online spaces and participating in virtual protests on social media. Yet many girls, especially those from poorer backgrounds, even faced restrictions on their online participation as they only have access to shared devices. Girls from higher-income backgrounds had more opportunities to develop leadership skills and engage in transformative change.
Girls also reported facing high levels of online violence – from blackmailing, bullying, stalking, fraud and deception to offensive memes, sexual harassment, invasion of privacy and leaking/misuse of private information, body shaming, sending explicit content/pornography, and distortion or photoshopping of images. In response, they formed strategies to protect their online participation such as controlling privacy modes in social media, switching applications, filtering fake accounts, and verifying friend requests. They also took collective action against harassment such as discussing, reporting and blocking accounts. But again, girls from higher-income backgrounds were able to develop the most effective strategies for mitigating online violence because they used social media platforms with better privacy and security options.
These findings from Bangladesh suggest that in the face of gendered obstacles to physical mobilisation, online spaces are important for Bangladeshi girls’ knowledge of and participation in social justice issues. Their participation in these spaces contributes to adolescents’ critical thinking in addressing social injustice and developing a sense of responsibility towards their in-person and digital civic engagement, as well as building their skills. But class inequalities shape both access to online spaces, and ability to develop strategies for responding to the regular gendered (and often sexualised) online violence that presents challenges to girls’ safe use of ICT – an issue to which there has been little attention in the context of efforts to expand girls’ access to digital technologies and online spaces.
In sum, gender inequality in access to and use of ICT has important implications for equitable civic engagement. It is essential to tackle this in order to encourage girls’ leadership in ICT.
