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Digital inclusion and the gender divide

By Linda

This International Women’s Day, the UN Women’s theme is DigitAll : Innovation and technology for gender equality.

A photo of Aleisha Amohia with the title of this story.

Today, 8 March, marks International Women’s Day and this year the UN Women’s theme for the day is DigitAll : Innovation and technology for gender equality.

We delve into what that means for wāhine here in Aotearoa.

Entering into kōrero with us is Aleisha Amohia (Te Ātihaunui-a-Papārangi), tech expert at Catalyst IT and co-president of the Wellington branch of the National Council of Women.

As a woman in the tech industry Aleisha is advocating for the IT industry to be a more representative space, mentoring younger women and addressing the digital divide that sidelines a percentage of our population.

"There are also real-world consequences for a tech industry lacking diversity. The products and services around us are all powered by tech or have technological aspects – tech touches everything. It can cause problems and possibly become dangerous if engineers and developers neglect to consider and include the needs and experiences of all potential users into their tech solutions" Source

Watch our interview with Aleisha here.

If you would like to know more about the work of the National Council for Women you can find details about the local branch and their meeting times on the website.

As discussed in the video, Wellington City Libraries also offers a range of services and programmes to assist in addressing the digital divide.

Among the offerings are : Free computer and internet use, Digital catchup sessions for adults, Techtime and Code club for children and young people. (Refer to our events calendar for more details about these sessions).

For those who meet the criteria, Newtown and Kilbirnie branch libraries offer assistance to sign up to Skinny Jump.

Skinny Jump is flexible prepaid broadband: Only $5 for 35GB of data, no contracts or credit checks, and the modem comes free of charge. You may be eligible for Skinny Jump if you are a family with children, are a job seeker, senior, live with a permanent disability, or live in social housing. Your address must also be covered by the Skinny network.

You can also join via the Linden, Tawa, and Newlands community centres, who can sign you up and give you a modem.

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