‘Digital & Beyond – Charting a Course for Women Empowerment in the Digital Age’

Do you remember those days when there were no cell phones or internet connection? Can you recall relying on pay phones instead of smart phones and using books to find out stuff instead of Googling? There is absolutely no doubt that digital technologies have dramatically transformed countless aspects of our daily lives. They have broadened our knowledge horizon, offered us unprecedented opportunities for networking and connection to people, information services and resources. Not only that, digital technologies offer multifarious opportunities for women empowerment and assists in driving female inclusion in workplaces. Therefore, the need of the hour is to turn digital technologies into an engine to bring about a more inclusive economy for women.

On 25th September, AGS Transact Technologies Limited (AGSTTL), a leading provider of innovative and customised payment solutions organised its inaugural AGS Horizon Women Connect on the theme ‘Digital & Beyond – Charting a Course for Women Empowerment in the Digital Age’ to discuss the evolving digital landscape and its impact on Women empowerment. Women Connect is an initiative under an internal Project named Horizon which has been launched to fuel digital transformation. Focusing on various aspects of digital innovation and technologies, Women Connect, aims to highlight the role of digital technology in supporting/enabling women empowerment in broadening women's access to education, healthcare, skill development, employment and entrepreneurship, among many other aspects.

The session comprised of an enthralling panel discussion among women leaders from all walks of life with interactive polls and Q&A sessions in between to keep the audience engaged. Here are few key pointers from the speakers of the event, which summarises the discussion that took place at the virtual summit.

The session began with Ms. Poonam Barua, CEO, Forum for Women in Leadership - WILL Forum India delivering the keynote address. Key takeaways from her session were “Women are part of the half population of this planet. In India, we have 500 million women. 500 million women is 8% of the world’s population which tells how important women are. This also tells us how impactful we can be. In order to be impactful, we actually need to do the entire volume of the strength of women. The question is what would you like to impact? The answer is the capacity of business and communities to innovate, to get innovative, to become more productive, to utilize all their talent, to bring and unleash new skills, to make sure that not a single equal opportunity/talent gets left behind and then to make sure that we are all in the competitive edge for the well-being of our business and our society.”

Post the keynote address, Mr. Sunil Khosla, Chief Marketing Officer and Ms. Namrata Gulati, Associate Vice President – Marketing at AGS Transact Technologies Ltd. briefed everyone about AGS & its operations, Project Horizon and the contribution and achievements of women employees at AGS. They also talked about the company initiatives to embrace women and empower them in the digital payments space.

Ms. Naina Acharya, Leader Operations – Dun & Bradstreet India introduced the panel discussion by summarising the keynote address and exploring the importance of digital technologies in terms of women empowerment by looking at specific aspects – personal & professional growth, access to information, communication, collaboration, access to essential services, financial transactions etc. She went on to moderate the session and here’s what the panellists had to say about the role of digital technologies in empowering women.

“Digital technologies have dramatically transformed every aspect of our lives and they have offered us unprecedented opportunities in terms of connecting to – people, information, services as well as resources. Digital technologies and digitization have led to a significant higher participation of women in employment, financial markets, and entrepreneurship and have in fact led to acceleration in women’s empowerment.” Avantika Rajagopalan, Global Operations Leader & Cloud Application Innovation at IBM.

“Keeping it contextual to the current environment, where we are facing a pandemic and everything is restricted, who would have thought that businesses would continue to work remotely. The culture in India is so personal and everything requires a physical touch a lot. Digital technologies and collaboration tools have allowed us to work and manage our household responsibilities in a seamless manner. Besides, with these technology first aggregators for booking travel, cabs etc. have made our lives so much easier. In the last few years, the consumption of information and data has increased multi-fold. Each year that passes, there is more and more information & data available to us and Digital makes it possible for us to consume it in a much simpler manner than before.” Prabhjot Minhas, Director – Marketing at SAP Concur

Why mere access to technology is not enough to support women empowerment? How can women have more control on technology besides access to technology?

Nithya Krishnan, Director – Marketing at Trend Micro Inc. went on to provide three more points that she believed are equally important for women empowerment other than access to technology. “India is ranked 149th out of 153 countries as per the World Economic Forum with global gender gap in terms of women in employment. In terms of women in work force itself, we account for 40% of workforce across. With respect to women’s access to technology, as per the latest research done by IAMAI, 69% of India’s 451 million of monthly active internet users are male members. Women graduates in India vs. global, be it, higher education, undergraduate degree, graduate programs or doctorate programs, we have risen to 48.6% in the year 2018-19. India tops the world in terms of women graduates in STEM.”

While more than 500 million Indians now use smart phones, less than 40% of women use mobile phones. Why is there a disparity in the percentage? Is it a digital literacy problem among women or is it reluctance?

“40% is quite a good number, to begin with. A few years back, sending a girl child to school was probably difficult or getting a laptop for a girl child was not so considered or women in technology itself was difficult. 40% is really good, the number is moving up. Earlier, the apps which we used on mobile phones or laptops used to be very clumsy and difficult to understand and navigate through. However, nowadays many of these applications such as WhatsApp and Google are very handy and easy to use. That’s where digitization is helping women connect with the lot of things that perhaps earlier they were not able to. With more and more people, 40 is going to slowly turn to 50 and with the falling cost of smartphones there is going to be a huge change.” Ms. Vrinda Pai, Director – Information Systems at [24]7.ai

If we want to focus on digital literacy to empower women, what is it that people around must focus on and what kind of progress has taken place in the past five years with respect to this?

“Women representation in the leadership positions has been on the rise in the recent years but is still not enough to close the gap. As per the World Economic Forum report, it is going to take us a century to achieve a full parity at the current pace we’re leading. There is still a massive gap in terms of women in leadership. At Trend Micro, the CEO has taken it up to partner with one of the not for profit global organisation called ‘Girls in Tech’. This is a new initiative we’ve taken to close the gap wherein we train the girls with technology and to get skilled. Even though we see a lot more rise in leadership positions with women, there is still a massive gap.” Nithya Krishnan, Director – Marketing at Trend Micro Inc.

Is it believed that financial independence should precede digital empowerment?

“Digital technology has helped women become financially independent; it has accelerated and opened up a plethora of job and entrepreneurship opportunities for women. In the work force, digital technologies have made women more useful overall, because we can work remotely and distantly. At the pace at which digital technologies are being used and embraced by women, we will reach the gender equality in work force about 40 years before than predicted in countries like India. Usually women have lot of restrictions because of social and cultural barriers to be able to do something on their own or pursue their passion but the fact is now, online marketplaces or social media has made it possible for women.” Avantika Rajagopalan, Global Operations Leader & Cloud Application Innovation at IBM.

At the end of the discussions, there was an open forum where the audiences were asked to put forward their questions. Some very enthralling and exciting questions were discussed among the attendees and the panellists. This led to a successful closure of the maiden edition of AGS Horizon’s Women Connect Virtual Summit.