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Digital Planet: Economic cost of the digital gender gap

Factual: Science & Nature

Economic cost of the digital gender gap

12/10/2021 GMT

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, Economic cost of the digital gender gap

Women are left offline and it’s costing governments billions, says the Web foundation.

Billions $US lost through women’s exclusion from tech: WiFi fidget detection and crowd counting: Immersive tech at the BFI Film Festival

Research by the World Wide Web Foundation has found that the gender gap for internet accessibility has cost countries billions of USD in lost GDP.  In the 32 countries studied a third of women were connected to the internet compared to almost half of men. This digital gender gap, their report says, has cost low and lower middle income countries USD $1 trillion over a decade.  Director of Research, Catherine Adeya, joins us live from Nairobi and we also hear from Ian Mangenga who set up the Digital Girl Africa project to get more women online.

Counting people with WiFi
Researchers have developed a method of counting crowds that doesn’t require complex AI or expensive camera surveillance but rather simple WiFi signals. Yasamin Mostofi from the University of California Santa Barbara tells us more about how this method measures fidgeting behaviours to figure out the size of a crowd and how it could be put to use.

The BFI London Film Festival Expanded
The BFI London Film Festival is going immersive.  Reporter Hannah Fisher has had a preview of this year’s hybrid programme which is full of tech - interactive VR, 360 films, augmented reality, mixed reality and live immersive performance.


The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Bill Thompson.

Studio Manager: Nigel Dix
Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz

(Image: Majority World / Getty Images)

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