Research Report: World Wide Web Foundation Releases Inaugural “Women’s Rights Online: Digital Gender Gap Audit”

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) are powerful tools for achieving everything from enhanced incomes and wider access to credit, to quality education and healthcare for all and more accountable government.
Yet a formidable gender gap in Internet access, digital skills, and online rights remains to be closed. Last year, survey research carried out by our Women’s Rights Online network revealed extreme gender and poverty inequalities in digital empowerment across urban poor areas in 10 cities. Women were 50% less likely than men to be online, and 30-50% less likely to use the Internet for economic and political empowerment.
Our inaugural Digital Gender Gap Audit expands on the survey results by assessing the policy efforts and progress made in 10 countries* around the main challenges identified through our research. We based our scores on 14 simple indicators for which reliable empirical evidence exists, and grading was done in the second quarter of 2016.

Reports

• Global summary
• Colombia
• Egypt
• Ghana*
• India
• Indonesia
• Kenya
• Mozambique
• Nigeria
• Philippines
• Uganda

*Note that the original study included Cameroon instead of Ghana, but we have chosen to highlight Ghana in the report cards as part of the 2016 Africa Summit on Women & Girls in Technology being held in Accra, Ghana on 13-14 September.