Government urged to investments more in ICT Education for girls

Josephine Oppong-Yeboah, a broadcaster and gender equality advocate, has urged the government to increase investments in digital education that prioritizes the needs of girls.

She said investing in digital education infrastructure would create an enabling environment and entice more females to the sector to support the country’s industrialization agenda.

Oppong-Yeboah was commenting on the theme, “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls,” in an interview with the Ghana News Agency when she attended the Commission’s Status of Women (CSW67) meeting in New York, United States of America.

The session was aimed at identifying the key factors and trends regarding women’s participation in ICT and its dynamics, as well as analysing practices that could enable women’s participation in the digital world.

It sought to provide updated evidence for prognostics and policymaking in women in ICT in the world.

Josephine Oppong-Yeboah said data trends suggested that gender inequality in the digital sphere was essentially a result of the persistence of strong unconscious biases about what was appropriate and what capacities each gender had, as well as about the technologies themselves.

She noted that for the country to address the gender inequalities in the ICT sector, it needed to initiate processes at the educational level, particularly at the basic school level to enable girls to develop an interest in ICT at an early age.

“If the existing biases are not addressed, rapid economic advances by digital transformation will not take into account the existing gender gap in the sector, which will simply amplify and, possibly perpetuate gender stereotypes,” she said.

Josephine Oppong-Yeboah said, “Only a few women graduate in ICT-related fields and very few enter the sector after graduation. Despite the increased awareness and numerous initiatives, women still face significant challenges in the sector that affect all stages of females’ career paths and life courses in the digital sphere.”

She thought that if equality in the digital sphere was not achieved, the world would miss talents, vision, resources, and wealth.

Josephine Oppong-Yeboah said when women were involved in technology development, they factored the concerns of their customized innovations that addressed their unique challenges.

On Ghana’s participation in the UN conference, she expressed concern about no representation from the country, describing it as “disheartening.”

“Today’s session is very critical, and Ghana needed to be here. We cannot claim to be interested in the affairs of women and ignore today’s session with no representation,” she told the GNA.