 Hello everyone and a very warm welcome to today's IID debates event closing the digital gap lessons from the pandemic a huge thanks to all of you for arriving so promptly. We have a very excellent panel of speakers lined up an exciting and engaging hour ahead of us. And while we wait for a few more participants to join I'm going to as quick as I can run through some housekeeping instructions and how we're going to use zoom today and together. So I'm going to hand over now to Liz Carlisle the director of communications at the International Institute for environment and development and our moderator for today's session is over to you. Great thanks very much Juliet and thanks to you all for coming. I think Juliet's given us a really warm welcome. And so, I think we can get straight into thinking about closing the digital gender gap lessons from the pandemic. I think we are really delighted to be thinking about this at the moment. I mean it's an issue close to our hearts. We've got a fabulously expert panel to discuss these issues with you today and I'll introduce them in a moment. I'm sure any of you who've been thinking about the press coverage or the commentary around the climate change cop have been aware that this question around inclusivity of access. How do people participate. Do we have equal voices. You know these these are very big challenges. And I think you know lots of people think that digital can be the answer. But actually is digital the answer, you know, or do we just transfer the same kind of inequalities, but in different ways. So one of the things we wanted to talk about today was to really explore that with a lot of the people who are working firsthand in these environments. I think that the pandemic has really accelerated lots of the changes for for many of us. And we just want to know, you know, has that accelerated changes elsewhere, or again, has it just perpetuated some of the same challenges and constraints that we have. So with me today is our panel. We have Mary Anna Chola, who is head of partnerships and programs at shoe jazz ink. And we will be looking forward to hearing from her. We have nasubo on Goma, who is a researcher at Carla. And nasubo I think likes to be referred to as NAS, so welcome to you NAS. I'm Grace Natabalo, who is a research lead at caribou digital. And welcome to you to Grace, we're delighted to have you here. And we will also be hearing from my colleagues, Sam Green, who is a senior researcher in iid climate change research group. I think Barry Smith is also a researcher in iid climate change research group, and Matt Wright who works with me in our comms group is our web planning and content manager. So we will be hoping to have five short sharp presentations or provocations from expert panel, and we'll follow that with questions. In the middle of our questions, we will do our soapbox opportunity. And soapbox is a phrase that we have kind of used in the UK. It implies something short and sweet you stand on your box you shout at the crowd, and you kind of give a minute's worth of your opinion. And in this case it will be a minute so forgive me if at the end of that minute I kind of shout at you and ask you to close, but we're kind of keen to have questions. So I think with no further ado I'm going to ask you Mary Ann to kick us off. Thank you. Let me just share my screen. There we go. You can. That's terrific. Thank you. Great. So I'll start with a big picture. At Shijaz Inc. we run an annual representative survey of all 15 to 24 year olds in Kenya. And what we found out is that despite increases in overall connectivity, mobile phone ownership among adolescent boys continues to significantly outstrip girls. Only 50% of adolescent girls report owning a mobile phone compared to 64% of adolescent boys. The digital divide widens around internet access, even more, as only 40% of adolescent girls report using the internet, often borrowing a smartphone, a computer or using a cyber cafe. However, the national gender divide overall appears to be closing. The percentage difference in mobile phone ownership between genders that's among adolescents was 24 percentage points in 2019, but that we've seen since falling to 14 percentage points in the year 2020. But I'd like us to look beyond access. The other thing we found out is that internet access does not necessarily equate social and economic value or sustained use. Again, when we think about girls beyond access, they face bigger barriers, which are often internal, social and cultural. When it comes to aspirations, adolescent girls have big dreams, but there's a lot of control from society and from their parents in terms of how do they actually go around experimenting to actualize these dreams. When it comes to their home and social media use, again, tightly controlled and often borrowed or in public places. When it comes to the information gaps that they need to feel to achieve these aspirations, again, we see a lot of control. So the point we are making then is that to unlock the potential of digital for girls, we have to think beyond digital. It has to be digital and so what we're proposing is a blended approach to overcome this powerful social and cultural barriers. And that's in person meetups. It saves places for girls for them to be able to open up. But then for us, while we're saying all of this, girls living in rural areas are the most disadvantaged amongst all 15, 24 year olds in Kenya today. Reporting the lowest income levels, the lowest rates of education, the lowest use of contraceptives and while less than a third of adolescent girls living in rural areas have access to smartphones, that's trend risks worsening as they are denied access to social, financial and the educational benefits that come with connectivity. So the provocation from us today is is the urban versus rural gap of a taking the gender divide. Thank you. That's really, really interesting, Marianne. Thank you. And I think you've put that so well that question of beyond digital, you know, that is just one, one part of the picture is the digital. It's the whole cultural environment. It's how people behave within their social groups, their peers, their families and so on, really interesting. And then number two, this point, this rural urban divide this situation where people are just, it's exacerbated by where they live and the kind of work they're doing. Thank you for that. Right. I think we'll be moving to Matt. Over to you, Matt. Certainly thanks, Liz. So, early this year I spent some time researching a range of digital issues, talking to colleagues and partners and peer organizations, mainly about how they work and collaborate online. As Liz was saying, there's been a huge shift to digital working recently in the wake of COVID and the restrictions on travel in particular. So it's crucial for us to make sure we're working in an inclusive way and considering issues such as gender. Marianne's just shared some good stats and I know Barry and Sam are going to do the same a bit later about the online gender gap. But there are some positive trends, which is the good news, but some less so as well. But the key point I think I'd like to make to start off is we can't put blind faith in technology alone leading to a more equal world. So the question I've been asking is how can we do this practically? So I'm going to go through just a couple of the things we've learned and the things we're looking at. But I wanted to emphasize that I'm sure there's much more and I'm really keen to hear everyone else's experiences and the ways you found to tackle these issues. So to keep things simple, I'm going to give a few examples just based on an online event like this one. And the first thing is that there is no such thing as too much planning. You have to be really deliberate about your approach. When things are left to unfold naturally, that's when they start to go wrong. We tend to find when you're not in control. And of course, this is a shared responsibility, men and women. It shouldn't be left to women to highlight these issues or suggest ways of dealing with them. So if we start with the basics, is your event and speakers gender balanced? Are your moderators trained in gender mainstreaming? How are you making the space comfortable and welcoming for women to attend and contribute? But even before you get to the event, there's a lot more you can address such as when the event is staged, what time are you organizing it for? Globally, women spend two and a half times more time than men on unpaid care and domestic work, I saw recently. So if you're scheduling your event at a time that conflicts when you know your audience has other demands, you're immediately excluding them. This online event uses Zoom and we're live streaming it on YouTube. So considering what digital tools and channels you use is crucial. I recently read some research with women living in a slum in Kampala. And they said that for them apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook were the Internet, mainly because they can be free to use on data plans. So these were the only platforms that they knew how to use. So how do we need to factor that knowledge into the way that we plan and structure events? On Facebook, if we put to one side the sort of the increasing moral issues that there are and the debate around that at the moment. We can't we also can't ignore that more women than men use Facebook. We could have live streamed this session on Facebook, if we wanted, but had we done so, is that enough? Perhaps we'd also need to be monitoring that channel, looking at the responses that people are making and encouraging interaction. It's not something you can just do and then forget you have to follow it up. I mentioned costs earlier, and we know this is one of the biggest reasons women are kept kept offline. So to encourage these, is it possible to provide data for them to use? It's pretty simple now to send data for people. And IID we found over the last 18 months in particular that donors are increasingly prepared to pay for this sort of thing to access marginalized audiences. Donors also have their own digital strategies, so we shouldn't be afraid to ask. We also shouldn't forget what works at in-person events. So there's been sort of quite well known studies that show that when women are given the opportunity to ask the first question in a question and answer session, this encourages subsequent interaction. These things equally apply online. And women may feel safer writing in a text box rather than speaking at an online event. So you can make the effort to encourage that and then crucially follow that up so that when that happens, you need to make sure that you respond to those contributions to ensure they're as valued as someone who's spoken at the event. We also think a bit about the questions that we ask, the examples we use and how they might be phrased to be more relevant or appealing to women. For example, if we're asking a question around energy users, rather than being fixed on business and enterprise, we might highlight domestic uses of energy to make it more relevant. And then finally, I talked to earlier about making spaces comfortable and welcoming. But I think we should also be explicit that these spaces need to be safe as well. So threats of violence, intimidation, and another key reason why women are kept offline. So perhaps we need to think about considering ways of making contributions more anonymous, perhaps by creating separate whiteboard areas where people can post comments anonymously and not just in the chat box. That's it. That's, I think, all I'll mention for now, but those are just some of the things that we're thinking about. And importantly, we're also sharing these with our colleagues and our peers. We've created a resource area internally, so when colleagues are planning an event, they can access these. And the final thing is that I'm conscious I framed a lot of these as challenges, but I hope that what comes through is that these are actually common sense preparation that you would expect to put towards any event really if you're thinking about it. So there's a real massive opportunity to engage with a wider audience through these. So yes, I think that's it, Liz. Thanks very much. And I look forward to hearing everyone else's experiences. That's great, Matt. And I think it does remind us that it is about thought, isn't it? It's about thoughtful planning. It's about talking to other people about what works. It's about listening to audiences and finding out how it worked with them and thinking about what's the implication of that going forward. So I really like your kind of practical presentation of things to think about, and we don't all get it right all of the time. So it's not something that you kind of can tick a box. It is an all the time thing. Thank you very much for that. So, Grace and Naz, I think you're next. I don't know which one of you would like to kick off, but you're both welcome to give your intervention. Thanks, Liz. I'll go first and then Naz will take on the other three minutes. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining. So at Caribou Digital, we have been exploring how digital platforms are enabling young people in Africa to find and do work online. And when I say platforms, I'm referring to digital websites that link buyers and sellers of goods and services. Think about Uber, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, freelancing platforms like Upwork, logistics platforms like Send in Kenya, Airbnb, e-commerce platforms like Jumiya, which is an African e-commerce platform, and so many others. So I spent most of last year talking to young men and women in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda to find out who are using these platforms for work, to find out how the pandemic had affected them. And overall, they say the platforms were a critical source of income during the pandemic, even though of course the earnings were eventually affected by the effects of lockdowns, loss of jobs by potential clients and business closures. But outside of these pandemic-related challenges, we found that women are increasingly using most of these platforms to earn a living because some of them have low entry barriers. And I think Matt mentioned how women are the bigger users of social media. So women, for example, are leveraging their existing social media connections to set up small businesses on Facebook, Instagram, while they're also using their homes as a warehouse or a workspace so they don't have to parent. And social media is becoming a preferred channel because women say they need just a little capital to start a smartphone and a network of friends to kick off their businesses. So I also spoke to women who decided to start freelancing online because of the pandemic. One in Nigeria and the other in Ghana, both IT graduates and they started using, they started their freelancing careers online at the beginning of the pandemic and after slowly progressing. And through our continuing work on platform livelihoods at Carripo Digital, we are also encountering women who are overcoming gender barriers and taking on job in right hailing and logistics sectors that are dominated by men. And so women are making an income of that. But of course, let's say there are so many challenges and barriers that women face when they're using these platforms. Globally, we know that platform workers, men, women are pushing for better pay, better working conditions and the like. But for men, there is another layer of challenges that they have to deal with. And we've already seen and we know that platforms are replicating all the challenges that women face in the offline world from gender bias, sexual harassment, safety issues, a lack of digital skills. As Matt mentioned, the burden of domestic responsibilities that they have to shoulder as they do this work. All these in one way or the other contribute to widening the digital divide. And one of the questions now we are trying to answer at Carripo Digital together with Kala where NAS works is through our research is how can we make platform work better for women. And I've mentioned women throughout as if there is one homogeneous group. But now I would like to ask my colleague NAS to break it down for us and show why just saying women is not enough. Thanks. NAS, the floor is yours. Cool. Thank you, Grace, for that nice introduction. Yes. The question that we're asking this time around is in what ways do platforms either empower this empowerment. So as we talk about women, we keep on putting them in one box as if they are one homogeneous group. And yet they have different interactions. They have, which ultimately determine which sector they'll be involved in, what time they allocate to their work. And this ultimately affects their earnings. So we looked at it and tried to ask the question, who succeeds, when and why? Who struggles and how do they cope? And also asking that question, who is not present? Because unless we understand the issues that women face and women not as one group, but women as separate groups. And this leads to our framing, which we are calling which woman, which woman are we exactly talking about? Because we know that if you talk about a woman, is she married? Is she single? What is their marital status? Is she a single mother that also determines the amount of time this woman has? Does she have also external parties that would determine which sectors they could be involved in? Remember, we're also looking at social norms. Living in a society that also looks at social norms, so that also affects women. We're also looking at the kind of support that they have. Because as we look at someone who is probably a single mother, their level of support would be a bit different. They would experience different barriers from someone who has probably spousal support in terms of earnings. We also look at a woman who also probably has care work. So someone with children will have caregiving responsibilities. Do they also have people to help them achieve their goals? Looking at another dimension is in terms of age. From the research that we did for last year and this year, we've interviewed over 100 people, both men and women. And right now, we are narrowing down of just women to just understand their issues. We realize that younger women may probably want, for them, flexibility rules. But flexibility means different things for younger women than older women. Another thing that metric that we found is in terms of where they live. So people in the rural areas would have, as Marianne rightly pointed out, they would struggle more in terms of accessing all these digital platforms. So people in those areas, some of them are not able to access digital platforms. Some of them do not even have access to the devices to help them connect online. The other thing is this woman that we're talking about, that she has a disability, are they able to access? Do platforms know about their disability? When you're talking about women, it's all these things that we really need to put into consideration, even as we bring them as one group. What are their literacy skills? Do they have, are they exposed? Because what we realize is that obviously the ones who are digitally surveyed are able to access opportunities. The other thing that came out, especially from our work, is being a fast one. Because we realize that the people who are fast ones have to also redistribute their earnings to support their families. And other support, for example, they're involved in community groups. So when it comes to women, don't just box it as one set of, as one people, try to see what are the things that you can do to at least bring them together, trying to also ensure that there is dignity as they use digital platforms. Trying to see how can they overcome these societal norms because we know that people probably in rural areas would struggle more. They would face challenges more than people in urban areas because sometimes when you hear people talking about women, you only see it from an urban perspective, but not from the rural perspective. So that's the framework I wanted to talk to you about. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you very much, Grace. And that's again really interesting. So we're hearing how platforms can offer opportunities, but we're also hearing how it can exacerbate inequalities. And I think your big point now is that women are different. Women have different needs. They have come from different places. They have different challenges, different opportunities. So thank you for that. I think that was a really clear understanding of how to differentiate much, much better. So now I think we're going to hear from Barry and Sam. And again, I'm not sure who's going to kick off first. First, thank you. Juliette, are you okay to share the slide deck? Thank you very much. So we're going to focus on mobile technology today. Next slide, please. Thank you. So we're going to join me present this and this section is roughly bisected in two parts. So I'm going to talk about access to mobile technology to indicate the degree to which inequalities that are prevalent in the physical world are actually being replicated in the digital world. But we want to present that this isn't the full picture. There are examples of this trend being bucked and there's some really good opportunities out there and there's some really good examples from our research. So it's to say that nothing is set in stone. But we do want to sort of hammer home that consideration needs to be given now. Otherwise, the digital divide does risk being entrenched. So the longest short of it is mobile ownership and it does remain unequal. So 83% of women across low and middle income countries, they own a mobile phone and 58% use mobile internet. But women are still being left behind. They're less likely than men to have access to mobile phones and to mobile services. As we've heard in the previous publication from Marianne, this is especially true for women who are the most underserved. That's including those who have low literacy or low level income or perhaps live in rural areas or have a disability. But I think one of the interesting things from the research is that gender itself is actually a compounding factor in many parts of the world. So the analysis shows that even where women have the same level of education, the same income, the same literacy and employment as men, they're still less likely to own a mobile phone or use mobile internet. Now that suggests that there are other issues at play, for example, social norms or perhaps discrimination. So the gender gap in mobile internet use, it continues to reduce, which is good news, with women in low and middle income countries only 50% less likely than men to be using mobile services. But that still belies quite a terrifying figure, which is in absolute terms women in low and middle income countries. There's still 234 million fewer women than men accessing mobile internet. And I think the thing that's quite concerning about this is the fact that the inequalities in the physical world and the digital world are self-reinforcing. If you have more access, you have more access. If you have access to digital technology and mobile technology, you have access to services. And then so this gap is only getting bigger. And so I'm going to pass over to Sam now and you'll start. Thanks, Barry. If we could go on to the next slide. And this slide is slightly deliberately provocative. This idea of mobile phones as centres of resilience is sounds good. But actually the point we're trying to make here is it's a little bit more complicated than that. But just to give a couple of examples, phones are often the first step on the digital ladder. And you can see here a number of uses that pastoralists, for example, who are often stereotyped as backward and quite slow to adopt new technology. Or often when you go and meet pastoralists and context embraces of mobile phones wherever that they can use them. They can break the communication, financial inclusion, satellite mapping. But again, there is a bias, I think, towards the way that men use these phones and less so towards the potential for women to use mobile phones as well to enhance their resilience. There are also plenty of examples of community-wide data collection. So SDI have a program called Know Your City, which enables people to collect data on urban issues. There are uses of mobile phones to take photographs of public sector assets to identify damage or highlight possible corruption. So there are uses for mobile phones at the individual household and community level. Go on the next slide. The problem is that it's a complex picture. You know, phones can help women to organize domestic tasks, particularly again in pastoralist contexts, they get access to market data and information. But they're also subject to some of the many cultural norms of new technologies that we see in such locations. So who controls the phone? How is it used? How many phones are there in the household? What happens when a woman is suspected of using a phone to call somebody that maybe it's perceived that she shouldn't be calling? These relationships of power replicate themselves to phones just as they do with things like livestock and other household assets. The point here is that the mobile phone and other digital technologies, they're not a silver bullet. You need long-term efforts to address the gender roles that are often unequal that reinforce inequalities, particularly at the local level. And just to come on to one last point on the final slide that perhaps we haven't discussed in much detail so far is that the mobile phone brings in a whole range of new stakeholders, network providers, mobile phone operators, internet providers, tech app developers, as well as local government authorities and entrepreneurs. They're all now part of the chain of how digital influences the way that people live their lives and the way that people manage climate risks and other kinds of risks. And we don't see that those stakeholders are sitting together at the table enough. There isn't enough dialogue thinking about how all of these stakeholders can address the requirements of vulnerable people and recognise the heterogeneity of men and women in the use of phones. So I hope that that's some food to thought and I will stop there. Thank you Sam. I think it's most definitely food for thought. And I would say that all of our presenters today, firstly, I'd like to say thank you for excellent presentations and nice and short as you promised, but certainly provocations for our audience. Lots to think about. I think Barry and Sam have quite clearly highlighted again that there are big inequalities and that the right people are not around the table talking about this. So if I think we're going to do a short poll now, that'll give you a chance as participants to be thinking about some of the issues and how you might stop inequalities. And also please do put your questions in the Q&A. If you find the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, please do put your questions in there. We will be using that to take questions and you can upvote the most popular ones, but we look forward to hearing from you. You can also now please do put the word soapbox in the chat if you would like to be someone who in a few minutes time does a short minute presentation or insight. So Juliet, I think you're going to give us a poll. We have a question for you. And it's all the questions are all around inequalities. You know, what would make the biggest difference to stopping inequalities being replicated in this digital sphere? Just tick one box and it'll be interesting to see what you come up with. Okay, so we've got improved access. That's interesting. And I think, you know, that point that Mary Ann was making earlier around this sort of rural urban divide. So we've got improved access for marginalized groups but we've also got improved access in rural areas. The whole question, I think, which has clearly appeared, isn't it, is this addressing the social and cultural norms that seems to be in terms of girls and women that seems to be making a huge difference. It's not just access to the tech, it's, it's access to how can you use it, who you get access, who's watching you, what, what are you allowed to be doing and not doing. Really interesting. Thank you very much for taking part in that. I think that sort of resonates with a number of the issues we've been talking about. So we have, we have a question here. So our question from, from Emma Simmons, thank you. It's okay for anyone of our panelists, what has your research shown about specific barriers for women with disabilities to access tech platforms. Anyone's welcome to talk, but I think now as you talked, you mentioned that when we're thinking about women in particular, we need to differentiate and I think you mentioned disability. I don't know if your research or Grace, your research around sort of business platforms, whether you discussed disability. Okay, I can take that. When we did the work, we interviewed some women living with disabilities and one of the things that we got from them is sometimes even just, so maybe I could talk about the sectors that the women work mostly worked in. The persons with disabilities either were either freelancers or they were selling stuff online. So they were micro and small people owning micro and small enterprises using either social media or digital marketplaces to sell their goods and services. So one of the barriers that they would, they would really articulate on was because most of them usually start a bit later than the rest of the population. By later, you find that they start school late, they start a business late, they start, so that's one of the challenges getting like an opportunity to even start doing business is very difficult and even sometimes even getting access to to also, for example, people who are MSc, so doing or selling stuff online for them, they would require someone to help them with delivery, they would require someone to be there to even help them with sourcing. So at every stage of their life, they have to have someone to help them in doing part of their work. So for freelancers, they had to take like regular breaks, which is good for persons living with disabilities, they had to take regular breaks when they have, they would have to listen to their body anytime. So the person I'm talking about had epilepsy. So anytime that they are feeling a bit tired, they would have to take regular breaks, which means that digital platforms at least offer them something to do or a way out for them. So that's really good to know, isn't it again, it's thinking through technology can help, but it isn't the whole story, a lot of other support structures and different kinds of support are needed. Yeah, and then the other thing is you never write, let's say on a digital platform that you know I'm a person living with disabilities because sometimes they would say that they don't want to, to people to feel pity, like come to them. So that's something that is different as opposed to let's say in the offline one, where you just have to probably look at them and then you know this person has like a certain disability. So maybe those are some of the things that could be explored even for people who are building platforms to ensure that their platforms are suitable for people living with disabilities and different disabilities at that. That's great. Thanks very much. We've got another couple of questions. So I'm going to move us along. We've got a question from Sarah that I think has been supported by others. The rural urban divide has been mentioned. And the questioner is wondering about the urban poor such as slum dwellers. Would you say they are limited in general or do they have opportunities that people in rural areas are missing? So I think we've probably got a couple of tapes here. We maybe have Sam and Mary Ann who might have some thoughts on this. Sam, I'm seeing you kind of nodding. Yeah. Yeah, I mean a quick thought. Typically, service provision for mobile access is much stronger in urban areas and that does change the opportunities. You go to rural areas and particularly speak to women and one of the things that they might be asking for is the provision of a mast so that they can get any data at all. So that does very much change the opportunities. It also depends on the country. In India smartphones are far more accessible than they are in East Africa. They're far more affordable as is the cost of data. So that does change the relationship to digital technology. Yes, with I think consequences that you can probably guess in terms of deepening that divide between rural and urban. Great. Thank you, Mary Ann. Do you want to comment on that too? Is any of your evidence support that? Yeah, so what I would like to flag for us is that Shijiaz funds in general would not be your well of young people. So our urban funds are living in informal settlements. So to say that even then they still have greater access to mobile technologies by virtue of them being in urban areas. But also by virtue of market opportunities, sort of weaker norms compared to rural areas, we see more agency as well amongst urban girls, whether they're living in informal settlements or not. So that divides remains. So that's really interesting. Thank you. And so I hope that answers your question Sarah or certainly moves us forward down that line. I've got a question here from Kathy and who says it would be interesting to hear panellists thoughts around personal data control and protection and ownership. For example, how do we ensure data is used for the right reasons by governments? Do people know their data is used? And I think behind the scenes here, Sam, you said you might have a comment on this. I know you are also talking about the sort of the key stakeholders who are around the table. I guess this is part of the stakeholder community, as I mentioned. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I'm just wading my way through a book called surveillance capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, which is dealing with a lot of these issues. One question that is raised is, are we comfortable with privacy being a tradable asset for people to get on the ladder? I'm not entirely sure that we should be. And just to challenge the question a little bit, it's not just how do we ensure data is being used for the right reasons by governance, but also by the private corporations, global corporations that use that data. Facebook is free in Sub-Saharan Africa, therefore, is many people's route through the internet and many don't realize that they are trading their behavioral information about what they look at and how long for and who they talk to with a company and they have no idea what it's being used for. And yet that is their route to engagement. And particularly speaking from the perspective, I think of the LDC governments that I've been working in, they are currently not at a capacity where they can engage at the scale necessary with Facebook's and Google's and the rest of them. So there does need to be regulation. It does need to be a public education on what privacy means and why it matters and who's using it. I think it's a big issue that probably isn't being talked about in LDCs. Thank you, Sam. I've also got a hand up from Matt and maybe Grace, I might ask you too, if you've got anything from your sort of business platform work on people, businesses worrying about their data or information. Matt, what were you going to say? Well, for a start, I echo everything that Sam said and particularly the book recommendation. I thought it was interesting in the poll that better regulation was obviously one of the options and no one selected that. But I just wanted to talk, just go into a little bit more detail about the digital education side of things, because I think that's, you know, that's what Sam was talking about in that, you know, often people don't understand what they're giving away when they make digital decisions. And I think that the flip side of that is that there is also the onus on us. When I say us, you know, organizations such as IED so going back to, you know, practical ways that we put on events and manage digital engagement and collaboration. You know, these are things that we have to consider as part of that. You know, we, we, when we choose tools and get people to engage in those tools with us, we are forcing them down a path to some degree, we need to give people choices and help help understand if that's if that's what we're pushing. So there's an onus on us as well, I think. That's great. I just wanted to check we haven't had an opportunity to hear back from Grace on any of these points. Grace, would you like to reflect back on some of these I've then got two questions still in the chat, one of which we might have partly answered. And then I want to check if we have a soapbox or so. But Grace, would you like to comment. Yes, so we haven't directly asked the women about their worries on data privacy, but one of the things that keeps coming up is of course safety and that is kind of linked to their data privacy. Women talk about how they're being harassed, be it freelancers, be it people who are women who are selling stuff on Facebook. You know, you advertise something then in your inbox you get a message that has nothing to do with your products. And these are things that worry the women. Then some of them I know I spoke to one of our woman in Nigeria who is doing business on social media and she's decided to abandon WhatsApp because she doesn't feel safe anymore. So while as the other panelists say, data privacy, we need education around data privacy because when women sign up they are looking to platforms as a way of employment. So the last thing on their mind is how is my data protected. And until something happens, you know, online violence or sexual harassment, it's never really, it's not much of a big issue. So I think there needs to be a lot of education around how one can secure their data, what options to take when they sign up for platforms. But these are things that are kind of bottom of the list for most women. Yeah, this question of priorities. I mean, I think it's the same the world over really. You know, we prioritize our needs and we're not thinking about all the things that sort of salmon map and talking around behind the scenes and you can see why. It's very dispiriting isn't it this thing that you know women are harassed all the time it's it's a it's a really disappointing thing and it's such a shame that digital technology just provides yet another root for this to happen. But apparently we have no people desperate to do a soapbox so please don't feel pressurized it was there if you wanted the opportunity. Give us a chance in the last few minutes to get to our next two questions. And Sibyl was saying that the results of the poll are quite interesting. She's wondering if the panelists can share more light on the interlinkages between the different options, ie how to change cultural norms and promote responsible use of data without better digital education. You know, Mary and you talked a lot about cultural norms grace and as you have as well. What are your thoughts here on sort of, how can we do this better what are links that we can make between the different responses we can do to get more equality. Any thoughts there grace I'm looking at you so maybe fire away. Well, as nice might be better place to answer this but one of the things that we found out from our latest research, it's Kenyan, Kenyan Nigeria Ghana but we have results from Kenya at the moment. And we found along on cultural norms women who have a bit of help for example freelancers who wake up at 3am, they have kids and they have to work a bit get the kids ready. And then work again and then sleep late to wake up early. Some of those who say they were coping better actually have a bit of help from their husbands. So one of the things we think would be a good thing to do is around cultural awareness or, you know, social consciousness, especially with the men or with a family as a as a unit. Because the women say if they have a bit of help if they could just be helped with domestic responsibilities then they would be able to do a bit more work and a bit more and also not feel like they're overly they're putting in more than like 26 hours over the day. So yeah. Thank you. That's it. I've got a hand from Barry so I'm going to take that and then Marianne and Naz if you want to add something and then we've got another couple of questions so we're racing to the end but commentary is aligning up. And so it was just on the options in the pool. And this is sort of this would be for now your research that we've been doing. That's a suite of options. And it's not just the case of one or the other. It's the case of these are touch points that need to all need to be pressed. And because it because it's such a it's quite a it's a large and quite insidious problem and like I say is there is a risk that inequalities will become entrenched if they don't if actions and taking out but it needs it's from all different spheres that needs to take place. And again, sort of echo Matt's point as well. One of the things from the research has come out is that regulation is huge and the governments need to act and but that's regulation not in terms of just the stick also need to be a carrot. Yeah, one of the things which I don't think was mentioned in the poll is that is around this issue of incentives and disincentives for tech providers to actively engage in some of the sort of more pressing issues. So actively try and tackle some some some groups which are underserved. And that's the role of government and regulators and tech providers. So it's a case of having a panoramic perspective in terms of suite of options, but it's also suite of actors, which are going to be involved in that. Great, thank you. Maybe we can have a very quick look at the poll again. I think Kathy you asked where the results of the poll are they're here. But I do want to give time to Naz and Mary Ann, just for a very quick comment so hopefully you can see that Kathy, and then we will we will move on. Yeah, we have a question on, we have a question from our mobile from our live stream, but we also had a question on mobile banking which I now have appeared to have lost. If someone can find that for me. I can. In the meantime, Naz and Mary Ann, would you like to say something on the cultural. Yeah, so what we realized as we're doing on carry, carrying out this research is that there's a difference between women who are more advanced women who have grown and used digital platforms more than the beginners. And that's the time it has like a mindset shift. For them, it's acknowledging that this when you're doing business or you're trying to trying to get to work online. It will take. You have to know how to overcome the barrier of, for example, when you've been harassed online when you're interacting with different people in the society, for example, when you're going to maybe deliver products to different men, it just like a mindset shift from starting as someone who does not know how to interact with other people and being your own person to know that I am to do that they're able to just stand on their own be a woman of their own identity. So that's that's how we realized women are overcoming or trying to to push back be even despite the societal norms that they face every day. Something else that I think I agree with also Mary Ann, it's something on access. When we're talking about access, we, we keep on saying access is a problem but for us we're looking at it beyond having just device or even receiving or having finance to even start a business or even start work for us. It's something on mentorship because a beginner would want to get mentorship from from a woman who has been in that business for a long time to get to that trajectory of being their own person and having their own identity online. So that's something that I've seen a trend from just being a beginner to sort of like someone who has carved her space online because that's the bottom line for most women. Great. Thank you, Naz. Mary Ann. I think to quickly build on Naz's point for adolescent girls in particular. It's the role that agency plays when it comes to countering restrictive social norms. So what we found works is when an adolescent girl and asks herself, do people like me do things like this. And the only way we're able to demonstrate that is by using role models, powerful, authentic role models to advance the cause. So I think for us it's really the power of media, the power of storytelling and authentic storytelling to build feelings of agency and confidence. That's great. Thank you very much all of you on that point. I think Barry, you're going to answer the question that we had around what are the barriers to mobile. I think if you can give a few points on that. Yeah, no worries. And so in terms of is this going to get the second part of the question is this going to be a big. It already is. It's actually huge. So there's not actually that many barriers which is quite good. Like, for example, just across Africa, you've got like 400 million people using mobile banking already. And you also have mobile money, which allows for financial banking transactions, but doesn't actually require an internet connection. You can just do the SMS. So you don't actually need the smartphone. So actually in terms of mobile banking in the Global South, some parts of the Global South, it's already very, very prevalent. And it's already a huge and it's actually a bit more sophisticated than a lot that we have, you know, in the UK. So and I guess the barriers are to that spreading infrastructure, access, cost of technology, and then all the other barriers which are there. They're not, I don't think there's any sort of exclusive barriers because let's say it's already quite well established. Great. Thank you. I mean, I think we're going to take a last question. We've had a question come in via a YouTube live stream viewer. And their question is with the recent Facebook outage, is there an argument for antitrust action, especially considering how many people in the Global South are reliant on Facebook and WhatsApp for service. We've got literally a minute on this. I don't know who might like to respond. Interesting question. Any one of our panelists got a view on that. Not looking like we do. I take a quick crack at it. Okay, have a good crack at it. I think it's always tempting to take a crack at Facebook and I mean, yes, break up Facebook, they're massive and, you know, but the question is, will it solve the problem? Any new firm that comes up is still very likely to be invested in this generation of data for advertising and shifting the behavior of different people. So it won't start problem. Is it going to solve the access to the internet problem? The issue is increasingly even the biggest firms are vulnerable to hacks. They're vulnerable to errors. They use systems that you tweak something in one place and that has implications elsewhere. Is that happening at Facebook and everything that Facebook does use is Facebook systems? So, I mean, yes, sure, but I don't know if that will solve the problem. I think we need to start seeing internet as a global public good provisioned by global public organizations to create that equity of digital access. I think that's probably, in the end, the best solution. Thank you, Barry, just very, very quickly. And then I feel I want to give enough time to say thank you to everybody. Thank you to everybody. No worries. So I guess it's just sort of it's linked to that is building on Sam said, I think important thing to remember is technology. And this is a gross generalization about 30 seconds is agnostic is a tool that is to be used is the utilization of that tool, which we spend sort of brings meaning to it in a way. That's a simplified perspective. I think that needs to be considered in in sort of the use of technology. Like as I say, we start talking antitrust and start using stuff. Great, thank you very much. It's three o'clock. Julia, you had a question. I think Matt was typing an answer to you directly. It remains for me to thank our panelists and I hope you can all give them a virtual clap. Very good presentations and to you participants if I could clap you for interesting questions. This has been a really engaging conversation. And thank you very much for coming. You'll be receiving a follow up from Juliet, those who participated. And we look forward to staying in touch. Thank you very much.