Today, the world celebrates international women’s day:
• This International Women’s Day, 8 March 2023, the UN Women and the United Nations in celebrating under the theme DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality.
• 22% of women make up only 22 per cent of artificial intelligence workers globally.
• A survey of women journalists from 125 countries found that 73% had suffered online violence in the course of their work.
• From the earliest days of computing to the present age of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, women have made untold contributions to the digital world in which we increasingly live.
Their accomplishments have been against all odds, in a field that has historically neither welcomed nor appreciated them.
• Today, a persistent gender gap in digital access keeps women from unlocking technology’s full potential. Their underrepresentation in STEM education and careers remains a major barrier to their participation in tech design and governance.
• And the pervasive threat of online gender-based violence—coupled with a lack of legal recourse—too often forces them out of the digital spaces they do occupy.
