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The Gendered Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic:
EXPECTED IMPACT 2:
A Changed Landscape of Work – Gender Equity, Reorientation and Re-skilling
The Mauritius Context
ICTs are the leading factor in boosting innovation and creativity in value chains across industry and service sectors30. It is expected that the ICT and science industry will gain increased momentum as an enhanced pillar for the socio-economic development landscape of the country bringing forward package of technology solutions to assist companies in moving forward post COVID-19 and responding to learned challenges faced during the pandemic.
The ICT sector should be an area of untapped opportunities for a new generation of women. Now more than ever, it has become very important to attract and train more women to the ICT and engineering sector. Concurrently, enhancing he capacity of elderly women to access the internet and online media is equally important in a bid to make the latter feel mainstreamed into society. Therefore, existing programs therefore have to be strengthen and expanded to include all cohorts of women. New sectors of ICT, Artificial Intelligence and application of ICT will be fast-tracked to achieve greater efficiency in the process of production of goods and services. However, for women to enter these sectors with a competitive edge, there needs to be a paradigm shift from studying traditional female dominated subjects to science and technology. At present, women are under-represented in science related fields such as Engineering (2.0% against 10.3% of men) and Information Technology (5.4% against 15.0% of men). The persistent under-representation of women in ICT and ICT-related fields calls for renewed efforts to engage female students early and effectively there-in. An added value is that as the ICT sector is constantly changing, requiring new set of skills and sophistication which lead to competitive pay. Therefore, applied human talent with the right skill sets will continue to be the key for the building of a vibrant and diversified ICT sector. Having more women in the ICT sector should also be smart economics for businesses given that technology consumers, women are important market influencers. Statistics in Mauritius show that girls perform better than men in the educational sector (with 81.7% at the Higher School Certificate Level). Policies should be put
30 I TU, 2012, A Bright Future in ICT Opportunities For A New Generation of Women, Available Online at https://www.itu.int/en/ ITU-D/Digital-Inclusion/Women-and-Girls/Girls-in-ICT-Portal/Documents/itu_bright_future_for_women_in_ict-english.pdf, Last Accessed 18 April 2020
