To tackle the gender digital divide, the UN Women Rwanda country office said it plans to have the first boot camp under the African Girls Can Code Initiative in April this year, whereby it will train 60 girls aged between 17 and 22.

Those who have completed S6 and are interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), are eligible for the coding training, it indicated, adding that two girls will be selected from each district of the country.

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The African Girls Can Code Initiative (AGCCI) was launched in 2018 with the aim to address the gender digital divide, as a partnership between UN Women, the African Union Commission (AUC), and the International Telecommunication Unit (ITU). It seeks to train African girls in critical coding and tech skills, setting them up to be computer programmers, creators, and designers.

In its first phase, the initiative has trained 600 girls and developed a guide on mainstreaming ICT, gender, and coding in national curricula across the continent.

As International Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8, under the theme "DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”, the UN Women is calling on governments, activists, and the private sector alike to power on in their efforts to make the digital world safer, more inclusive and more equitable.

According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), in Africa, 35 per cent of men were using the internet, while the rate was 24 per cent among women, as of 2020.

Yet, according to the UN, "Our lives depend on strong technological integration; attending a course, calling loved ones, making a bank transaction, or booking a medical appointment. Everything currently goes through a digital process,” adding that today, women hold just 22 per cent of positions in artificial intelligence, to name just one.

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In an interview with The New Times, ahead of International Women’s Day, the UN Women's Representative in Rwanda, Jennet Kem, talked about various aspects including major achievements made so far in line with women’s rights, the challenges that remain, including gender digital divide and negative social norms and stereotypes that hold women back, and how to tackle them.

Excerpts:

As Women’s Day is observed, what are the major achievements worth celebrating, mainly in Rwanda?

International Women’s Day 2023 is going to be celebrated on a note of technology and innovation and how we leverage these to promote women's empowerment, and gender equality.

I appreciate and really acknowledge the strength that has been made in Rwanda with regard to women’s rights.

The first area where Rwanda is making us proud as Africans and also at a global level is political participation, where we have 61.3 per cent of representatives in the Lower House being women; this is a ground-breaking record because it’s the first record in the world for women to be represented in parliament at this level.

That is a very great achievement for the country. And when I listen to women leaders appreciate the approach, the resilience, the courage – because we only see figures, we don’t know the story – and when you listen to the story, you will appreciate the journey.

So, I really want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the role of the leadership of this country, the role of women in influencing policies and laws, especially the constitution, the role of civil society, the role of media, and the role of partners like UN Women that have worked alongside the women from all sectors to support government policy in this light.

Looking into the history of the country, we have a lot to celebrate with regard to women's empowerment and gender equality.

Looking at the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which is considered the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights, how is Rwanda progressing especially in bridging the gender digital divide?

Beijing (Declaration and Platform for Action) was really a landmark and ground-breaking moment for women.

It covered all the critical issues we are going through today, starting from climate change, in Beijing (Platform for Action), technology is there, ... access to finance is there, fighting poverty, fighting hunger, the girl child, all these things that become a crisis; peace and security, women’s empowerment, all of them are in the 12 critical areas of the Beijing (Platform for Action).

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Rwanda is doing well with regards to almost all the areas of the Beijing Platform for Action that the country prioritised, and with innovation and technology, especially as Rwanda is one of the global colleagues on the action coalition on innovation and technology under the generation equality forum.

We see the emphasis on girls in STEM, and we see the emphasis on youth doing science and technology, which means the country has this strategic vision of making itself, its youth, and its people savvy in this aspect that is going to be the driver of the world’s economy and the way we live and work going forward.

Considering the current situation of the digital divide between women and men, how is it and why does it matter that countries should focus on bridging that digital divide?

Just as I ended by saying ICT is going to define the way we live and work as men and women, if there is a divide, if there is a gap, we just have that urgency to bridge it so that nobody is left behind.

Look at during the time of Covid, how much the whole world depended on ICT. We were working from home, we were communicating from home, you could call a doctor from home; you could not travel but get connected to your family in other parts of the world, just that practical aspect.

So, everybody needs to have equal access to information, technology, and digital devices, and not only access but the ability to use them effectively. So that’s the interest we have in bridging this gap.

And that is why under UN Women, we introduced, in partnership with the Government, the AU programme that is focused on Africa’s girls coding – the African Girls Can Code Initiative – which is an AU programme for its Member States. It is being implemented in this country in view of bridging this digital gap.

We have been involved at the regional level because before coming down to the countries, it was being coordinated from Addis Ababa. So we have been sending participants from the country for the digital coding camp. So, going forward, we are now bringing the programme, together with the government, into the country. It is going to start this year.

How important is digital coding for women?

We can see how coding is helping to create solutions to the problems we have. I have seen young girls innovating solutions to end violence against women, innovating solutions to distributing health materials, innovating solutions to so many issues, to financial inclusion. So, the coding that is important for men is also important for women.

So, we are bridging the gap; that coding should not just be seen as something that is reserved for men; it is for human beings, and human beings are men and women, boys and girls.

What contribution has UN Women had to Rwanda’s human rights gains/protection?

Un Women like many other UN agencies supports government policy; we are here to support the government to achieve its commitment to women and implement its programmes. We are only the contributor, the main actor is the government.

And, being a contributor means working to align with what the government has prioritised.

We contribute to a bigger picture that the government has already shaped.

Take for example women’s political participation, UN Women in partnership with the Ministry of Gender, the Women Parliamentary Forum, and the National Women’s Council, we build capacity for women.

We work with women candidates, we support them, and we do a lot of work towards any election to make sure that women have the skills, that women have the spaces, including media spaces, that people know of the women’s agenda so that when women go out to vote, they will always vote from an informed background to make sure that women that deserve to be voted in are voted for.

So, whether it is from the part of women’s rights to the area of political participation to economic empowerment, to end these stereotypes, and negative norms, UN Women supports, with its partners, the work that will always help to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment.

What are some of the challenges making women still lag behind in Rwanda in some areas, and how is UN Women working with partners to address these issues?

The major challenge after 25 years of the Beijing (Declaration and Platform for Action), after more than 40 years of the International Convention on Elimination of Discrimination against Women, we still have very serious gender gaps, despite efforts, despite progress.

And the key thing that the world is realising now is the gender norms, and stereotypes – negative social norms – that hold women back.

And this is an area that needs a lot of focus and attention because it has to do with mind-set, it has to do with culture, with the things people believe in, things people hallow and attach importance to, but which are segregating men and women, discriminating women, causing violence against women, exploiting women, and really keeping women behind on most development indicators.

I will take the general norm that the woman’s place is in the kitchen. That’s general almost across all of Africa. If you were to unpack that norm, you will see a lot of prohibition, you will see a lot of discrimination, you will see a lot of things that are contrary to the convention on the elimination of all forms of discriminations against women, in a simple cultural expression ‘a woman’s place is in the kitchen’.

So what are we doing? Like UN Women at the level of Africa, we started to discuss a programme on bringing cultural leaders into gender equality work, because these are the custodians of the cultural norms. Educating them on the modern norms, the conventions that have been ratified, and the ills that are caused to women and families through these negative social norms.

We also have a huge programme on positive masculinity, where in some countries especially like Rwanda, we call it "men engage,” and we have a strong partner in this country called RWAMREC (Rwanda Men’s Resource Centre), which is championing this work, together with many other partners.

One other area that challenges women’s empowerment and gender equality, is the area of unpaid care work. This has been identified even in the Sustainable Development Goals as one of the structural issues to be tackled for women to be able to exercise their rights - their rights to political participation, rights to public spaces, and rights to join the mainstream economy.