Tomorrow, March 8, 2023, marks International Women’s Day. It is an opportunity to raise awareness of discrimination against women, celebrate their achievements and take action to achieve equality.
Today, we’re bringing you along to Madagascar, where one of the centres we founded back in 2012 is organising an event introducing women to digital maps. The centre aims to bridge the digital divide in the rural region of Itasy. But on a larger scale, what can be done?
The digital mapping event
This week, the IT Cup Centre, a centre TSF founded in Madagascar to help bridge the digital divide, is organising an event, Girls In Map. In honour of International Women’s Day, the event aims to introduce women to mapping technologies like OpenStreetMap. Why is it relevant to women's rights?
OpenStreetMap provides mapping data to thousands of websites and apps thanks to a community of volunteers. Basically, it’s the Wikipedia of maps. Humanitarians also use it to map disaster zones.
However, according to the UN, women are still under-represented in the digital and mapping sectors – this is one of the reasons Irinah Arson, project manager in the IT Cup Centre, organised the event. For women in rural areas, it is also an opportunity to have better access to technology in general, and to improve their skills and profile for future employment opportunities.
“This event will allow women to learn about digital technology.”
Irinah Arson - Project Manager and Organiser of Girls In Map
Lack of female representation in digital mapping communities
The lack of women representation in mapping communities has an impact on the maps created: women tend to map certain services like hospitals, domestic violence shelters, or even toilets, whilst men don’t. Women rights’ experts link this to the fact that they often have to care for children, the sick, or the elderly, so they tend to focus on access to services, as well as on the safety of public transportation.
Other digital maps focus on humanitarian issues that disproportionately affect women, to give tools to fight against those issues and to raise awareness about them.
