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Covid-19 has accelerated the digitization process of Spanish society in 2020 and has made the gender gap in internet use practically disappeared. However, despite this progress, the pandemic has perpetuated traditional gender roles online and it has even increased the differences that exist between men and women in some fields during the last year.
Thus, a report prepared by the National Observatory of Technology and
Society (ONTSI), attached to the public entity Red.es, notes that in some uses of technology, such as those related to health, education or care, Covid-19 has widened pre-existing gender inequalities, assigning these tasks back to women also in the digital realm.
The ONTSI analysis indicates that confinement and the so-called “new normal” have had a strong impact on the adoption of technology and the use of the Internet in Spain, both by men and women of all ages, but warns of what the accelerated adoption of technology by the population in the last year “has not been homogeneous by sex”.
“Although 2020 has been the year in which digitization has accelerated more rapidly in the last decade and the gender gap in terms of frequency of internet use has been pulverized, in other dimensions such as uses of technology for health, education or care purposes, The Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced pre-existing gender inequalities, assigning these tasks again to women, also in the digital sphere, “he concludes.
Faced with this situation, the ONTSI warns of the need to “overcome gender stereotypes” in the use of technology and bet on the training of women in technology and higher studies of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), to achieve an increase in women specialists in the field of Technology of Information and Communication (ICT), where future employment expectations are higher.
In this sense, it emphasizes that to take advantage of the opportunities offered by digitization in the process of recovery from the pandemic, and make the digital world a “equal space”, it is necessary to boost “digital publics with a gender vision”, so that opportunities are equal for women and men in the different digital fields (social, work, educational or leisure).
Regarding Internet use, the report indicates that the gender gap has disappeared, since 91% of the Spanish population, both men and women, regularly use the Internet. In fact, Spain is the third European country, after Sweden and Finland, in gender equality. Despite this, in women with a lower educational level, a small gender inequality persists (-2%), in line with what happens in Europe.
Gender gap in the digital sphere
Although gender is no longer a determining factor when it comes to accessing the Internet, it does continue to condition the themes of Internet use, since the study confirms that it is women who traditionally, and more intensively during the pandemic, have concerned again to a greater extent the care in the family environment.
In fact, of the 25 activities analyzed by the report, fourteen men have more intensive use, compared to nine in which use by women predominates. Among the latter are activities such as communicating with others, finding health information, requesting doctor’s appointments, and education.
For example, in the last year, women have used digital communication tools such as instant messaging (one percentage point more than men), video calls (three percentage points more) and social media (three percentage points more). Likewise, 44% of women use the Internet to make an appointment with the doctor, seven percentage points more than men
Refering to digital education, the pandemic has also caused women to start using the network more frequently for educational purposes, either for self-training or to help the online education of other household members.
On the contrary, among the activities that women perform the least compared to men, the most prominent play or download games, with a gender gap of six percentage points in Spain, and the use of internet banking, with a difference in favor of men of four percentage points.
Despite all this, the report also mentions a couple of positive aspects, such as that Spanish women have consolidated in the last year as more digital than the average of its European neighbors in all dimensions, except the sale of goods and and the use of digital banking, and that gender gaps disappear in the youngest group (19-24 years), with identical uses of the network, except in the case of video games.
Gap in teleworking and training
On the other hand, the ONTSI report also points out that with the pandemic the trend in teleworking has been reversed and the number of women who now work from home is more than two percentage points higher than that of men. In contrast, in 2019, the proportion of men who teleworked was one percentage point higher than that of women.
“Teleworking could be accumulating gender stereotypes during the pandemic, assigning more to women the reconciliation of work and family burdens through remote work during the confinement and subsequent periods of restrictions of the new normal. Gap that should be corrected as soon as possible so that telework contributes to job improvement for both sexes “, he warns.
On the other hand, the report also indicates that the pandemic has shown that “the great gap pending” for a fair digital transition is found in areas such as training and digital empowerment, since only 0.5% of graduates in Spain are graduated in specific ICT disciplines, compared to 3.5% of men. Along these lines, there is also a very small percentage of women working as ICT specialists (19.7%) in the Spanish productive fabric.
“This low proportion of women trained in technological disciplines, and the minority percentages of women working as technology specialists can place the female gender in a clear disadvantage for the input of a increasingly technologized labor market, and where the profiles of technology specialists are the most demanded in the new digital economy “, he emphasizes.
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