Digital Gender Divide: Challenges and Opportunities for women in Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Abstract

The recent upsurge of the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the growth of the fourth industrial revolution by shifting the education and economy to digital platforms. This digital transformation allowed governments, scholars and entrepreneurs to rely on artificial intelligence, block chain, crypto currency, cloud computing, speed of 5G data, big data, etc. The Sustainable Development Goals concerning the establishment of gender equality and empowerment of women and girls for sustainable peace will likely face a new façade of challenges in this contemporary digital world. The backdrop of this shift highlights the gender gap that has persisted for ages. The distressed participation of women in the workforce and economy can contribute to the male population dominating science and innovative technology in disguise to act as a gatekeeper to protect online sexist insecurities and mould the content and services accordingly. The dependence on digital mode with positive expectations exposes the shortcomings of the fourth industrial revolution, which can drastically change the method of interaction in our lives but is largely confined to a few individuals. This paper aims to analyze the socioeconomic factors of the digital gender divide and the consequences that are likely to increase the gap if not taken into consideration the root cause of the digital gender divide. Hence, this paper focuses on the case of India and adjoining regions as a site of the study to see the extent of women's education and access to the digital revolution with proper skills and safety to enable them to harness the opportunities.