Bringing equity to women in ICT

BitDepth#1397

MARK LYNDERSAY

AT AN ONLINE discussion on gender equality in ICT on International Women's Day (IWD), much of the discourse examined the sometimes huge and often lingering disparities in gender in regional and global technology governance.

There weren't any easy solutions raised during discussions on the topic, Empowering Women: Promoting Gender Equality and Creating Opportunities, but a clear note was rung by Desha Clifford, a director at Canto.

While there was justifiable focus on the minority profile of women involved in ICT and the limited positions offered to them in organisations and government, Clifford correctly noted that the place to start is with young girls.

"The conversation needs to be focused on young girls who, based on the type of toys they're sold and the type of cartoons they watch, aren't necessarily pushed into some fields. That probably resulted in the disparity we see in terms of the lack of female representation in these STEM-oriented careers."

There are programmes implemented by Canto and other organisations represented on the IWD discussion panel – “including the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (Citel), the ITU Network of Women and ITU Women in Standardisation Expert Group" – which target both students and working professional women, but the most compelling change is likely to come when countries decide to make digital literacy a policy imperative and insist on ICT education as a priority in the school system.

The scholarship profile for CAPE results in 2022 doesn't just reveal an almost complete dominance by government-assisted schools and a strong showing by female students at 72 per cent of the 100 scholarships awarded. The list also offers a window into how ICT-related studies are being prioritised in these "prestige" institutions.

The entire scholarship profile of Hillview College, for instance, reflects wins for all eight students in information and communication technology studies.

Counting the female scholarships for ICT studies is easy. Two for Holy Faith Convent, Penal, one for Naparima Girls' High School out of the school's 19 scholarships, one for St Augustine Girls' High School and one for St Joseph's Convent, St Joseph.

Dr Maria Myers-Hamilton, managing director of Jamaica's Spectrum Management Authority (roughly equivalent to TATT), noted that numbers from UWI, Jamaica were indicative of general trends in tertiary science education related to ICT. While the university's undergraduate programmes in pure and applied sciences and technology begin hopefully with a 56 per cent ratio of women to men, graduate programmes drop to 48 per cent participation by women. Diploma programmes are populated by 37 per cent women.

In engineering, the ratios are worse. In undergraduate and graduate engineering programmes, just nine per cent are women.

For Dr Kim Mallalieu, senior lecturer in UWI's Department of Engineering, the challenge is straightforward, if intimidating.

Speaking at the event, she noted that solutions "must collectively span the most modest of communities of potential users and creators to the most sophisticated, and include decision-makers at all levels."

"We must exert our influence in our individual and organisational to close the gender digital divide, to encourage and enable all persons, regardless of gender, to use and create safe digital products, and to realise their personal aspirations."

It's increasingly clear that the TT education system must commit to introducing technology into the curriculum at a much earlier stage.

The performance of Hillview College in achieving ICT scholarships suggests an institutional engagement with the challenges of teaching technology in secondary schools.

What's happening there should be emulated elsewhere, with a special focus on government schools, where a refreshed engagement with underperforming students might be enabled by changing both what is learned and how it is delivered.

How many technology-oriented educators are sitting in the decision-making chairs at the Education Ministry?

Our education system doesn't cater to a range of student capabilities and learning capacities. The decisions about who goes where to learn what continue to be driven by the results of a single test instead of a continuous assessment of aptitude in the learning environment.

If there's one lesson the stumbles of online learning under pandemic lockdown made clear, it's that any use of technology by young children must be guided by adults to add any value in the class environment.

Everyone isn't cut out to be a biochemist, but that doesn't mean they should get shoved into clerical oblivion because of exam brinkmanship.

The danger that our education system faces is simple. Even the nation's best students may excel in studies that may prove irrelevant to the job market when they are of employable age.

The pursuit of equal opportunity in ICT education will only be embraced when a diversity of education perspectives informs the curriculum.

Mark Lyndersay is the editor of technewstt.com. An expanded version of this column can be found there