Learning content

Sexism and Gender Inequalities

A general approach to sexism

The limited presence of women in the 4.0 Industry is one of the effects of sexism. We live in societies where structural inequalities between men and women exist. Referring to structural inequalities means that they depend on the organisation of society. The professional digital field is only one aspect of this.

The European Union has acknowledged these inequalities and is addressing them by implementing equality policies and systematising the activation of gender mainstreaming. This is a practice that analyses public policies regarding the differentiated impacts it may have on men and women.

Sexism in the work sphere

In the workplace, inequalities between men and women are connected to three main factors

• Women have a double workload: women combine paid work in the professional sphere with unpaid domestic work in the private sphere to a greater extent than men. This double workload has an impact on their careers. For instance, interruptions of professional trajectories and part-time work for family or childcare are more frequent for women. It is an obstacle that inhibits career development and has a negative impact on income and retirement income.
• Gender bias: the highest positions in companies are rarely occupied by women because there are also biases and stereotypes regarding their legitimacy to occupy these jobs. Bias stems from stereotypes about women and can lead to discrimination. The glass ceiling is a common metaphor used to describe this invisible barrier that prevents women from rising beyond certain positions in the hierarchy.
• The role of work organisation: there are different mechanisms that lead to the reproduction of inequalities. For example, the masculine model of career progression considers a career as a linear and uninterrupted pathway, the role of informal relationships in career advancement, gendered task allocation, unequal distribution of speaking time for men and women in meetings, etc.

Sexism in the digital field

Did you know that the invention of the very first algorithm ever is attributed to Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)? In fact, many women were computer science pioneers during the late 19^th century and the 20^th century. You can learn about dozens of brilliant women in computing science in the poster below

The general characteristics of sexism in the labour market are fully reflected in the digital professions.

Gender bias play a role in training and educational orientations. Here is an example of how gender bias work and can take place very early in women’s life

Stereotype	Bias	Discrimination
“Girls have a more artistic mind; they are not interested in science”	“Girls do not know anything about computers”	“Because she does not know anything about computers and do not care about it, I will not guide this girl into digital field”

Women themselves internalise these biases from an early age, through family and school socialisation, where different mechanisms and stereotypes progressively push girls away from technical disciplines. Internalisation means that women come to think that they are not fit for these careers and minimise their own abilities and skills.

The masculine culture in the IT world is quite strong. You will again find the gendered biases of the organisation of work (linear and uninterrupted career progression, the importance of informal networking, easier financial risk-taking for men than for women, etc.). In addition, there is a strong image of computing science as being reserved for "geeks" and “hackers”, which are widely represented as men, for example in pop culture. You can think about how men and women are represented in some TV shows and video games.

The gendered allocation of tasks and responsibilities in the name of the "complementarity" between men and women is another form of sexism in the digital field. Some organisations valorise the complementarity of women's skills, who are more relational, able to find consensus, etc., with men, who have the technical skills. This phenomenon brings more diversity to an organisation, but eventually, it confines women to junior positions that emphasise interpersonal skills, while only 10% are in highly skilled and technical positions!

Considering these issues of structural inequalities in the digital field, many women in the scientific and entrepreneurial world have been looking at ways to tackle these inequalities. The need for a power-building approach for women in the digital field emerged. This approach is called “empowerment”.

Women’s empowerment

Empowerment: where does this concept come from?

Even if we are talking about empowerment in the digital field, this concept arose from various social movements around the world during the 20^th century. Here are some of the important milestones in its emergence:

• USA, 1960-1970: the emergence of the term "empowerment" in the civil-rights movement and struggles of Afro-Americans,
• Brazil, 1970: empowerment is taken up by Paulo Freire (Brazilian education specialist) and his followers in their grassroots work of popular education and "conscientisation”,
• Latin America, 1980: feminist movements adopt the concept of empowerment and spread it to Africa and India,
• Beijing Conference, 1995: international institutions and NGOs adopt the empowerment paradigm.

More generally, empowerment is an approach to individual and collective power whose development is attributed to feminist movements. The concept of empowerment is defined by feminist movements as the ability to make choices and to change power relations individually and collectively. Empowerment is thus linked to the acquisition of the means and resources to change. These means and resources can be summarised as follows.

Critical knowledge and skills	Access and control over resources	Self-esteem
Education and the acquisition of new knowledge are crucial for women to be able to position themselves equally in the different spheres of society. However, to bring about genuine change, it is not enough for women to be educated to the same extent as men, they must also be able to develop critical knowledge that enables them to question gender relationships and norms.	Empowerment requires access to financial means, to means of production but also to services (health, mobility, childcare, etc.)	Empowerment is bound up with the strengthening of the positive identity of any woman, but also of her social group.

Different types of power in empowerment

Empowerment is a process of power-building that involves the acquisition of different types of powers:

• Inner power: this is a power that strengthens the individual by working on self-esteem. This is the product of individual factors (personality) but also collective factors (the way others see us counts in building our self-esteem). Thus, it is common to find among women some bias which leads them to limit themselves or to suffer from the "imposter syndrome" when they take on responsibilities. When women also experience class and racial domination, their individual and collective self-esteem is further affected.
• Power to: this is about strengthening what one has, such as intellectual capacities (knowledge, critical knowledge) but also economic and social power.
• Power with: collective power, social and political power that allows for solidarity in the defense of a common goal.

These three forms of power put forward by feminist movements are seen from the perspective of power as energy and competence rather than domination. Therefore, they are not to be understood as a will to gain "power over" others.

Finally, empowerment has two levels:

• Individual: which refers to the ability to make choices and act on one's own life,
• Collective: which refers to the implementation of actions focused on social, economic, and political changes. In this perspective, the development of empowerment implies a collective questioning of gender relations.

What about the digital field?

In the digital field, you can also find these three types of powers

• Power with refers to the construction of networks of women IT experts,
• Power for refers to the development of technologies that directly address women's needs and support their empowerment,
• Inner power refers to the assertion and creation of one's own autonomous identity through technology.

Three models of empowerment

First used in social movements and then adopted as a paradigm by international institutions, the notion of empowerment has evolved. Today, it can be found everywhere in the public policy spectrum. It can be used for individual empowerment and/or collective transformation.

We can distinguish 3 models of empowerment that co-exist today (Bacqué & Biewener, 2013):

• The radical model,
• The social-liberal model,
• The neo-liberal model.

Before reading the matrix below, think about what empowerment means to you. Take a few minutes and write down on a piece of paper all the words that come to mind when you think of empowerment. There are no wrong answers. You can now compare the words you thought of with the three models of empowerment and find out which model you identify with best.

	Radical model	Social-liberal model	Neo-liberal model
Key influences	Feminist movements, grassroots movements, popular education movements, and theories of social transformation (Paulo Freire, etc.)	Keynes' social liberalism, which is an economic liberalism that legitimises and makes essential the role of the state and public policies to reduce social and economic inequalities	Neo-liberal theories that put the market at the forefront of social policy thinking
Key challenges for empowerment	Empowerment is part of a project of social transformation. It aims at ending the stigmatisation of dominated groups, strengthening their self-determination, and redistributing resources and political rights	Consideration of the socioeconomic and political conditions of individuals	Addressing poverty and inequality by enabling people to exercise their individual capacities, to make rational choices, to be 'entrepreneurs of their own lives’ to be integrated into the sphere of work and consumption
Key concepts	Justice, redistribution, social change, awareness, power	Equality, opportunity, poverty reduction, good governance, autonomy, ability to choose	Productivity, autonomy, responsibility, delegation, personal achievement, group project, entrepreneurship

Why Women Get Ready?

As we have seen, women are already facing a “triple disadvantage”, due to gender-biased stereotypes, gender gaps in the labour market, and the digital gender divide.

To empower women in this context, we have chosen as an entry point the strengthening of women's digital readiness skills, while being aware that this is only one possible aspect of empowerment. Digital readiness refers to a set of digital competences a worker needs to thrive in the 4.0 Industry labour market.

WOMEN GET READY is designed to bridge the digital divide and empower women with a set of tailored digital resources to boost their digital readiness and increase their job opportunities, and thus take advantage of jobs opportunities related to digital transformation.

Case study

No case study for this Module.

Questions and answers

Q: What can I do to develop empowerment in the digital field?

A: Implementing an empowerment strategy within an entire field cannot be achieved by a single action. It is worth working on the three dimensions of empowerment, which integrate both levels (individual and collective). Improving the "power with" means creating and consolidating networks of women experts in IT, but also of women entrepreneurs and investors in IT. Subscribing to professional social media or attending webinars on the digital economy are ways to connect with many women across the world. Improving "power for" implies having diversity in a work team, so that everyone can share their experience throughout the project. Share your point of view, as a woman, on the use or the purpose of an application, a website, or a product, which can minimize gender bias (men don't always realize exactly what the realities of women are, and vice versa), allowing for the creation of products that really meet the needs of both men and women. Finally, developing "inner power" can be achieved through awareness and attention to representativeness and diversity within organizations, but also within products. Acquiring valuable competencies for working in the digital economy is a way to strengthen this inner power, enabling you to participate fully in the digital work sphere.

Q: Can’t women’s competencies really complement men’s competencies?

A: There is no doubt that in a professional environment, it is crucial to promote complementarity between individuals and to be able to make the most of each person's strengths. This improves cooperation and boosts everyone's motivation. However, there is no such thing as "feminine skills", more relational, and "masculine skills", more technical. Everyone, as an individual, can master every competency and it is essential to develop all types of competencies for everyone. Only in this way, can you ensure a truly equal and inclusive workplace.

Q: Are digital readiness competencies specific to women?

A: The digital readiness competencies addressed in the following MOOCs are not gender specific. This means that there are no "female" nor "male" competencies, everyone can acquire and master these competencies. In fact, as women, many of you already possess skills and attitudes that correspond to digital readiness competencies. However, as a woman, you will probably face more structural barriers than men that affect your entry and participation in the digital economy. Through the MOOCs, you should be able to recognise the knowledge, skills or attitudes you already have, as much as acknowledge your legitimacy to participate in the digital economy and discover some paths to it.

References

• Bacqué, M. H., & Biewener, C. (2013). L'empowerment, un nouveau vocabulaire pour parler de participation ? Idées économiques et sociales, (3), 25-32.
• Bereni, L., Chauvin, S., Jaunait, A., & Revillard, A. (2020). Introduction aux études sur le genre. De Boeck Supérieur.
• Charlier, S. (2009). Les essentiels du genre 10, Genre et Empowerment, Le monde selon les femmes.
• Commission Européenne. Women in the digital age: final report. [en ligne], 2018.
• Commission Européenne, EU Startup Monitor, [en ligne], 2018.
• Faure, L. (2021). L’absence des femmes dans les métiers du numérique. Analyses FTU.
• Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. (2022). Focus : la place des femmes dans le numérique. Bruxelles :FWB.

Additional resources

https://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming - the European Institute for Gender Equality portal on gender mainstreaming

https://notabletechnicalwomen.org/ - a printable card game presenting women in tech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhjsRjC6B8U – a short talk explaining everyday sexism

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/history-human-computers-180972202/ - an article about the gendered history of computing science