Launch of the White Paper on the gendered digital divide

Press release - The Digital spring announces the release of its White Paper on the gendered digital divide, a study conducted by sociologist Amina Yagoubi and based on collaborative research.

Following a first phase of action research on digital uses among young Quebecers [Yagoubi, Digital Spring, 2020], this new study highlights the presence of a strong gendered digital divide. Although this divide does not represent a threat to young people, it could have a negative impact and increase socio-professional inequalities between men and women, especially in a context of digital transformation. The NP maintains that women are stakeholders in the economic and social fabric, and is pleased to contribute to the advancement of knowledge about the digital divide among young people.

"What came out of the first phase of research is that there is a gendered digital divide. We discovered that a lot of women are not interested, or not very interested, in technologies and that there are really some biases and failings in this digital world," explains Amina Yagoubia researcher and sociologist, at the launch of the White Paper on February 23, 2023.

Some observations

1. TECHNOCompétences (2017) reports, that in Quebec, only 20% of IT positions are held by women (OCE, 2019).

2. Some figures in Quebec (2019-2020) show that in technical programs (CEGEPs and college technical programs), women's representation is lowest in science and engineering (SG) (St-Cyr et al., 2021: 7).

3. In the pure and applied sciences, a few disciplines have a lower presence of women (St-Cyr et al., 2021: 17):

• Computer science: 19% of women at the bachelor's level, 25% at the master's level, and 24% at the doctoral level;
• Physics: 23% of women, 27% at the master's level and 26% at the doctoral level;
• Mathematics: 34% of women at the master's level and 16% at the doctoral level.

The book in two parts

The White Paper is divided into two parts.

Part I - Portraits of Women in Tech

The first part allows us to understand what brings women into the ICT field, in an environment often dominated by men, by presenting portraits of women who contribute directly or indirectly to the "empowerment" of women in technology.

Part II - Quebec's Digital Mediation Ecosystem Workshops for girls

The second part looks at digital education for young girls in an extracurricular context in Quebec and offers a series of interviews with actors in the ecosystem enriched with various information. This exploration of the environment through testimonials invites us to take a look at initiatives aimed at young girls in particular to increase their digital literacy, but also provides an opportunity to highlight the role of creativity in digital learning.

Download the study.