Bridging the Gender Divide: How Technology Can Advance Women Economically

Technology defines our era. In the past few decades, numerous innovations—including ever-shrinking computers, mobile phones, and alternative energies—have been introduced in homes and workplaces, changing the way we live, how we work, and what we’re able to do. Bridging the Gender Divide: How Technology Can Advance Women Economically examines why technology is essential to women’s economic advancement and clarifies how it puts the process inmotion by showcasing technologies that have helped women in developing countries to ncrease their productivity, create new entrepreneurial ventures, or otherwise access new income-generating pursuits.

This paper builds on ICRW’s long-standing research and program work on the realities of what it takes to enable women to increase their resources and economic opportunities, and strengthen their ability to compete in market economies. Most important, it speaks to the growing number of actors driving innovation fromthe public, private, and social sectors with practical recommendations on how to improve the way technologies are developed and deployed so they benefit women and enable them to be more successful economic actors, stronger leaders, and greater contributors to their families, communities, and domestic economies.