Launch of OECD-APEC Report: The Role of Education and Skills in Bridging the Digital Gender Divide

On 29 January, \I launched the joint OECD-APEC Report entitled “The Role of Education and Skills in Bridging the Digital Gender Divide: Evidence from APEC Economies” during my mission to Chile. I launched the report with Teodoro Ribera, Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Rodrigo Yañez, Undersecretary of International Economic Affairs, Mrs. Isabel Loncomil, Co-founder of Lirmi Chile, and Mr. Pelayo Covarrubies, Director of “País Digital.” You can find the report here: bit.ly/2RVj2Zx .

Ministro Ribera, Ministra Plá, Subsecretario Yáñez, Distinguidos participantes, señoras y señores:

Es un placer estar aquí para presentar el informe APEC-OCDE El papel de la educación y las habilidades para cerrar la brecha digital de género. Este reporte es un resultado concreto de la colaboración entre la OCDE y Chile durante su año APEC, cuyos resultados han apoyado la Hoja de Ruta APEC sobre Mujeres y Crecimiento Incluyente que Chile impulsó en el contexto APEC. Seguiremos trabajando estrechamente con Chile y con las demás economías APEC en la implementación de esos importantes compromisos. Permítanme complementar lo que fue presentado en el video con algunas de las principales conclusiones del estudio APEC-OCDE.

Tanto en el caso de las mujeres como de los hombres, estar en condiciones de aprovechar todo el potencial de la transformación digital contribuiría a hacer más sostenibles e inclusivas las distintas economías y sociedades.

SIN EMBARGO, incluso a fecha de hoy, las mujeres van rezagadas en cuanto a las posibilidades que tienen de costearse herramientas digitales, y de acceder y hacer uso de ellas.

Acceso

• En todo el mundo se conectan a Internet unos 250 millones de mujeres menos que de hombres.
• Lo mismo sucede en las economías APEC. En todas ellas (salvo EE.UU.) se constató que fueron menos las mujeres que utilizaron Internet que hombres (la brecha de género más amplia fue la de Perú, con 5,3 puntos porcentuales de diferencia, seguida de las de Indonesia y Malasia, con 4,8 p.p.).
• Y no se trata solo del acceso a Internet, sino también del uso que hacemos de él.
  • Más hombres utilizan Internet para buscar trabajo (las brechas de género más amplias fueron las de Chile con 9 p.p. y México con 5 p.p.).
  • Las mujeres utilizan en menor medida servicios de banca por Internet en México (3 p.p. menos) y en Chile (10 p.p. menos).
  • Las mujeres tienen menores probabilidades de utilizar servicios de Internet móvil. En México, por ejemplo, la probabilidad de que tengan teléfono móvil es un 5% inferior a la de los hombres y, de que usen Internet móvil, un 10% menor.
  • Y las mujeres usan y desarrollan menos aplicaciones informáticas.

Asequibilidad

• Son numerosas las mujeres que no pueden costearse comprar y operar tecnologías digitales. De hecho, en economías de ingresos bajos y medianos el coste de 1 GB de datos puede superar el 5% del salario mensual. La asequibilidad puede representar una barrera importante para acceder a herramientas y medios digitales, en particular en zonas rurales y entre las personas socioeconómicamente desfavorecidas.
• ¡Se trata de un círculo vicioso!
• Los obstáculos a la asequibilidad perjudican particularmente a las mujeres. Se aprecia una correlación intensa y negativa entre los niveles de educación e ingresos de las mujeres y la brecha de género en la propiedad y el uso móvil de Internet (móvil).

Demasiado pocas mujeres cursan en las economías APEC los campos STEM.

• Las mujeres rondan tan solo un 27% de quienes obtienen un grado STEM.
• Incluso tras lograr matricularse en estas carreras, es mucho más probable que terminen por no graduarse, presentando además una probabilidad de cambio de carrera que duplica la de sus colegas varones.
• Entre quienes tienen un doctorado en TIC, hay casi 3,5 veces más hombres que mujeres, y, en el caso de un doctorado en “ingeniería, fabricación y construcción”, el porcentaje de hombres triplica al de mujeres; en cambio, las mujeres están sobrerrepresentadas en campos “menos técnicos”, como salud (79%), bienestar (75%) y educación.
• Esto responde a un bajo nivel de confianza entre las niñas. Nuestro estudio PISA (para estudiantes de 15 años) concluyó que, en todos los ámbitos, en preguntas relacionadas con sus competencias en ciencias y matemáticas, las niñas muestran un nivel de confianza un 10% menor que sus compañeros varones.
• Y en nuestra encuesta PISA las niñas manifestaron actitudes menos positivas hacia la competencia que los niños.
• De esto se concluye que las trayectorias profesionales comienzan a divergir antes de los 15 años, mucho antes de que efectivamente hayan de tomarse decisiones profesionales importantes.
• Estas diferencias en cuanto a niveles de autoconfianza y disposición a competir, así como la percepción de las mujeres de que las industrias tecnológicas estarían “masculinizadas” y, por tanto, dominadas por hombres, alejan asimismo a las mujeres de los trabajos e industrias mejor remunerados.
• Por ejemplo, en todo el mundo, el 90% del desarrollo de aplicaciones informáticas lo llevan a cabo equipos integrados únicamente por varones. ¡Como para extrañarse luego de que tengan un contenido violento!

¿Qué causas subyacen a la brecha digital de género? ¿Cuáles son algunas posibles soluciones?

La falta de habilidades digitales, la falta de tiempo, la carencia de modelos (¡Porque no puedes ser lo que no puedes ver!), y sobre todo, los estereotipos y normas socio-culturales impiden que las mujeres aprovechen plenamente los beneficios de la digitalización. Cualquier solución debe hacer frente a estos desafíos desde la raíz y no perder de vista que:

Sin las políticas públicas idóneas, es probable que los obstáculos a los que las mujeres se han enfrentado —y siguen enfrentándose— en el mundo analógico se multipliquen en el futuro digital.

• Las intervenciones de política tempranas y sistémicas, orientadas tanto a los sistemas educativos como a cambiar las normas culturales y afrontar estereotipos, serán cruciales para abordar las brechas de género y evitar que estas se amplíen con el despliegue de la transformación digital.

Espero tener la oportunidad de comentar estas cuestiones con más detalle durante el diálogo con expertos en educación e ingeniería.

OECD-EU-ECLAC joint side event: Opportunity has no gender: Unlocking women’s potential in LAC

On Monday 27 January 2020, I participated in an EU-OECD-ECLAC side event: Opportunity Has No Gender: Unlocking Women’s Economic Potential in LAC in the framework of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN ECLAC) XIV Regional Conference on Women in LAC.

Find below my opening remarks including the presentation of the ongoing work in SIGI LAC regional report (part of the OECD-ECLAC-EU joint project).

Thank you Alicia Bárcena and Ambassador Zervoudakifor your kind words.

Dear Ministers and panellists,

Today, I feel honoured to be here with the champions of gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean. Certainly, worth making a long trip from Paris!

And I’d like to thank the “EU Regional Facility for Development in Transition” for providing us with a tremendous support to launch the joint EU-ECLAC-OECD project on gender.

We are here today because we believe that a truly inclusive growth cannot be achieved if we leave half of our population unempowered.

Of course, significant progress has been made in the region to close the gender gaps.

Women’s labour force participation in LAC is now around 50%, almost at the OECD average 52%! But when you look at the gender gaps, it still stands at 27% compared to the OECD average of 15.8 % in 2018. Let alone access to quality jobs – women earn 16% less than men on average compared to the OECD average of 13.5%. In the private sector in LAC countries, In Latin America and the Caribbean, women still only account for between 7.5% and 15% of seats on boards of largest publicly listed companies. This is well below the OECD average of 22%. In 11 countries of the region, women are still prevented by law to enter certain professions (i.e., jobs requiring heavy lifting or deemed dangerous.)

Women’s potential can be reached only if they have physical, economic and decision-making autonomy.

Today, women’s economic empowerment is trailed.

Women in LAC spend two to three times more in unpaid care activities than men[1]. From 2.2 times more than men in El Salvador to 5.8 times more than men in Guatemala.Even when both parents participate in housework, women still take most of the burden: For example, in Peru, women spend an average of 15 hours per week cooking, compared to less than 5 hours for men.

And women are doubly disadvantaged. These unpaid activities are not officially counted as work, which leads us to two challenges:

First, because they are not officially recognised as work, these unpaid activities do not open rights to social security, which severely limits women’s independence and their ability to engage fully in society.

Second, the invisibility of unpaid care work leads to misleading perceptions of women’s economic role.  Of course some countries are taking measure: For example, Colombia has formally acknowledged the key economic contribution of unpaid care and passed a law (ley 1413 de 2010) mandating the collection of time-use surveys to account for the care economy in national accounts. We need more data like this to have a clear picture of the work women and men are undertaking.

And then, there is a human rights aspect that have a significant impact on girls’ and women’s future life, hampering their potential.

Although progress has been made in reducing the number of VAW incidence in the LAC region thanks to new laws enacted to protect women, 27% of the women have still suffered at least once in their life from intimate-partner violence. And this persisting trend creates a vicious cycle of violence, adolescent pregnancy, poverty, marginalization from the society and economic activities. Indeed, the LAC region has the 2^nd highest regional rate of adolescent pregnancy in the world, with around 15% of all pregnancies occurring between the ages of 15 and 19. There are many reasons, including child marriage and violent act of getting women pregnant and abandoning them – and the toxic masculinities allow men to believe that violence is justifiable. And shockingly, women also believe that violence against them is justifiable! In 2018, 12% of women in the region considered that a husband was justified in beating his wife under certain circumstances as trivial as burning the food or neglecting the care of the children.

Because I mentioned girl child marriage, let me give you a shocking number figure as it remains widely practiced, concerning 1 in 4 women of the region.  LAC is the only region of the world where child marriage rates have remained stagnant over the last 30 years. At this rate, 20 million more girls will become child brides by 2030. In Nicaragua, 30% of girls below 18 are or have been married.

All these bring about a steady rise of single-mother households in LAC, exacerbating the “feminization of poverty” (low education, low income, and limited employment choices). In 2015, 1 out of 3 households in the region was headed by women, ranging from less than 20% in Mexico to over 35% in Uruguay.

We need to break this vicious cycle! This is a global problem affecting so many girls today and tomorrow.

Toxic masculinities, women’s passive mindset, child marriage, lack of access to family planning and contraception, lack of access to justice – all have to be changed!

And the OECD is taking a major step forward, following up on members’ concern. We will be making a renewed commitment to ending VAW in the OECD VAW Conference next week in Paris.

Why can’t we eradicate these persistent gender inequalities?

It is often because of a stigma. Even with all the great policies, reforms and progress in many areas, cultural norms and stereotypes prevail in our society. Media, social networks, news, films, school, home all reproduce the gender stereotypes, and as a result, girls have lower level of ambition and aspire to a certain role. And we should all take responsibility to change the mindset of both men and women.

In Argentina, for example, 68% of the population believe that “when a mother work for pay, the children will suffer”.  

Gender-based mindset has to change for both men and women. But we need effective tools to do it right.  

This is why the OECD has the Social Institutions and Gender Index to look at how social institutions shape women’s lives, and to identify what is driving various forms of discrimination.

We measure deep-rooted discrimination in social institutions and looks at the laws and social norms that restrict women and girl’s rights.

For the upcoming LAC Regional SIGI report, we will introduce four key dimensions that affect the life cycle of any women and girls: family (incl. girl child marriage and responsibility within the household); physical integrity (incl. VAW and reproductive rights); access to productive and financial resources; and civic liberty (incl. political representation and access to justice).

In addition to the SIGI updates, the joint EU-ECLAC-OECD project will also deepen the analysis of women’s disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care work.

Transforming social norms requires thinking creatively and starting early, when social norms are learned. Education plays an important part in challenging negative stereotypes: Sweden, Mexico and German, for example, have ensured that textbooks are free of gender bias. Much remains to be done, including training teachers, raising women’s confidence and tackling the highly competitive environment (particularly affecting boys to nurture their toxic masculinities later in life).

Media, social media, film industry, news, all have to change to move towards gender-neutral contents and campaigns. And the OECD, together with its partner like UN Women and member countries, are the driving force behind the international efforts to engage men in the process. This is why at the OECD we host our Barbershop Conference, in partnership with the Icelandic delegation.

Still, we should commend that, albeit very slowly, LAC countries have been on the right track towards achieving gender equality.

LAC has achieved three quarters of the path towards gender equality. On a scale of 0 to 1 [0 indicating no discrimination and 1 indicating full discrimination], LAC’s average level of gender-based discrimination now stands at 0.25. 

Women’s political representation has increased. Amongst the top 10 countries worldwide on female representation in national parliament, we find 4 LAC countries [Bolivia (53%), Cuba (49%), Nicaragua (46%), and Mexico (43%)]. On average, 25% of the region’s parliamentarians are women.

In Argentina, Costa Rica, and Mexico, quotas have led to impressive increases in women’s share of the legislature.

And, we see an increase of women in leadership. In 2018, Colombia elected its first female Vice President. Barbados now has a female Prime Minister for the first time.

So the region is on the right track, but not enough.

Fundamentally, we need to change legal frameworks and address social norms. Legal frameworks continue to allow discrimination in the forms of limited paternity and parental leave entitlements, unequal remuneration, and limitations in the choice of professions. For instance, all countries have laws mandating maternity leave, but only 9 have the same laws for paternity leaves, and 6 have parental leaves. The belief that women, and particularly mothers, should not work, contributes to the region’s large gender gap in labour force participation and in remuneration.

In sum, what can we do to accelerate progress towards full gender equality in the LAC region?

1. Close legal loopholes: for instance, the legal age of marriage needs to be set to 18 years old for girls and boys alike, and without exceptions.

2. Reduce women’s unpaid care work: We need to recognise, reduce and redistribute the burden of unpaid work. Ensuring well-paid father-specific parental leave and improving the availability of good quality and affordable early childhood education and care (ECEC) are two important levers.

3. Engage men and boys: through awareness-raising campaigns at all levels about healthy masculinities.

4. Adopt an intersectionality approach: to take into account the double burden that falls on women at the intersection of discriminated groups.   

5. Invest in gender-disaggregated data: to track progress and be accountable.

Economic case

And let’s not forget about the economic case for women’s empowerment, which always gives incentive for a high-level political commitment.

According to SIGI, discriminatory social institutions come with a huge cost!  Current level of discrimination in laws and social norms induces an income loss of USD 6 trillion, which is equivalent to 7.5% of global income! We could expect the increase of the regional annual GDP by 3.6 percentage points, if there is a gradual and total elimination of gender-based discrimination by 2030.

The case for gender equality is clear, and we should capitalise on building momentum and countries’ actions to promote fairer, more inclusive societies. Imagine the potential for growth that remains to be unlocked in Latin America, where only 33% of women were in paid employment in 2016^[2]!

Dear Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Gender equality has been an OECD priority for years. We have supported countries to take action through evidence-based policy recommendations and guidance on best practices informed by our world-class research, evidence and data.

We hope that the lessons and commitment displayed during this meeting and during the 14th Women’s Conference will carry through to our next LAC Regional Programme “Inclusion, inclusion, inclusion” to be held on 15-16 June in the Dominican Republic. You are all invited!

The OECD is delighted to be part of this ambitious project.

I look forward to the panel discussion to deep dive into the challenges of unpaid work and future of work that women face in the region.

Thank you. 

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[1] Across the region, women spend between two to three times more time on unpaid care activities than men  (ECLAC, 2017), pointing to the persistent perception of women as primary caregivers (OECD, 2016)

[2] OECD Gender Data Portal.

APSIA Deans and Directors Meeting 2020: Speech: Workforce Skills for the Future

On 10 January, Gabriela Ramos delivered a keynote speech in the APSIA (Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs) meeting hosted by Sciences Po, which convened over fifty Deans and Directors from around the globe. She discussed workforce skills for the future based on OECD’s analysis of the impact of digitalisation and the risk of exacerbating inequalities, on pervasive skill mismatch, and the importance of educators to foster morals, values and ethics in students in developing various skills to navigate through an unpredictable and changing world.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I want to thank Science Po, particularly,  Dean Letta and Director Mezzera for convening this meeting. I am honoured to be with you today to speak about the workforce’s skills for the future.

Pace and Depth of the Digital transformation

Let’s start from the begining. The digital transformation is changing our World dramatically. It is not only the depth of this transformation that poses great challenges, but also the pace. It took 5 years for 25% of the US population to acquire smartphones, while it took decades for  previous technologies, like television and electricity, to reach the same market size.

Indeed, over half of the world’s population is now connected to the Internet, compared to only 4% twenty years ago. And smartphones are imposing a ‘always-on” lifestyle.

Technology is pervasive.

According to the OECD PISA, 43% of 15 year-olds spend between 2-6 hours a day online and today over half of them report “feeling bad” if they are not connected to the Internet. With all the ups and downs, we cannot deny that technology is amazing when it allows you, as in my case, to see your daughters in the other side of the Atlantic, in Montreal!

Digital technologies are not only changing the workplace, but also the way we get our news, the way we interact (or not) with each other, the way we participate in democratic processes. So their impact is felt beyond the labor market. These issues are beyond our conversation today, but are life changing ones.

Skills for the labor market

However, given your role in preparing the students for the world of work, let’s focus for a moment on this.

You all know that the main uncertainty derived from the changing world, is that traditional professions and activities are changing in nature and scope, and new professions are being invented. The new generations will not have a job for a life time, but several occupations, and change will be the only constant. This is where the concepts of lifelong learning and adaptability get new meaning.

For the institutions, anticipating change and preparing people to thrive, is of the utmost importance. But also to support those that are already in the labor market. We cannot get comfortable with business as usual.

And the wave of change has also been impacting the labour market worldwide

In the next 10-20 years, 14% of existing jobs could disappear as a result of automation, another 32% could face substantial change in how they are carried out. These jobs are usually those that can be automated, the routine jobs, the middle skills jobs.

In the meantime, other professions are being invented. For example, big data architects, cloud service or digital marketing specialists did not exist until recently.

Job contracts are also changing. Those linked to the platform economy are exploding. These Jobs officially earn the classification of ‘self-employment or entrepreneurship”, although this is not always the case.

In the meantime, our current skill sets will only last for the next decade or two, as technology advances.

Skills mismatch

Even more shockingly, in a context were we have the most educated generation of our lifetime, too many workers face job mismatch: they are either over- or under-qualified.

According to a recent global survey,  38% of employers reported problems finding the right employees with the right skills. In Latin America, this was half of the employers! In this graph, you can see that almost 40% of workers have a mistmatch of qualifications.  But this jumps to 52% in South Africa, 41% in UK and Spain, 38% in Italy and Canada, 34% in Frence.

At the same time, large numbers of higher education graduates face difficulties in finding job opportunities matching their qualifications. One in three are overqualified, although this does not mean they are overskilled. This is a source of frustration and anger for many students and employers!

So one of the main duties of your institutions, and of the governments of our countries, is to try to connect the skills you are working to shape better with the requirements of the market.

Information systems to understand the evolving needs of the market, in partnership with the private sector,  become indispensable if we want our students to succeed.  This requires strong multistakeholder cooperation.

An interesting source of mistmatch is also related to the lack of digital skills. This is an interesting real-world paradox, where in a technologically rich environment, there are still many workers that are not comfortable using computers! According to our PIAAC survey, which measures the competencies of adult population, only 25% of participating adults felt at ease using computers!

There is also still a low share of graduates entering into disciplines that would enable them to master technology better. Adults with a tertiary degree in engineering manufacturing and construction and natural sciences, mathematics and statistics earn over 60% more than adults with upper secondary education[1].

It is clear that a high premium is given to students with STEM skills, and this is particularly worrisome for girls.  I will come back to this later.

When responding to these challenges, we should also consider the broader picture, as with increased inequalities of income and opportunities in many OECD countries, we should not forget those that are left behind.

The digital transformation, if it is not well managed risks opening a large divide, not only among individuals, but also among enterprises. There are clear “winner takes all” dynamics at play in the digital world.

Let me give you an example. Even though we are all worried about the slowing down of productivity growth (a paradox in the age of innovation), when you go more granular and compare the productivity of leading and laggard firms the results are staggering. While frontier firms, particularly in services, can gain 3-5% productivity growth each year, the rest of the firms exhibit flat productivity.

To this, you should add the question of data ownership, data sharing, and data utilization. Those that collect and curate data are at the frontier, and developing the markets, through AI experiments. They have access to finance, they have access to skills. They will pull away from all of the rest that do not have access. This is why data governance is so important.

The outlook here is not so comfortable. Only 250 firms globally generate 70% of R&D and patents, and 44% of trademarks.

And most of the world’s top R&D investors are located in the US, UK, Germany, China and Japan.

The rise of online platforms is also concentrated: Of the top 15 platforms in 2017, 9 were US companies.

Gender angle

While this is happening, we know that half of the world’s population still does not have access to the internet. Even worse, 250 million fewer women than men are online.

Actually, all the gender gaps as we know them (of representation, of distribution of unpaid work, on wage gap, on leadership gap) will pale with the trends we are seeing in the digital world. There are few girls who opt for ICT

disciplines. They have less access to technology, and according to our “Gender and Digital” report, 90% of software development is done by male only teams.

Beyond re-thinking how to bridge these divides, we should also reframe the way we deal with the technolgy, not only to be prepare individuals to master it, but to be in charge of its development and impact. First, to use technology to find answers for the social and environmental challenges we face, but second to avoid the downsides of this technologies as we saw in Christchurch. We need to be technology shapers!

Broader reflection on education

This leads me to my final reflection, on the broader role of education and skills formation. We live in a convoluted world so the skills of the future are not those that only focus on preparing for the labour market, but those that prepare for life.

Those that turn our students into agents for change building a more peaceful, sustainable and inclusive growth. Yes, education to know, education to do, but more importantly, education to be!

Nobody will put away the technical and specialized knowledge, but this is only step number one. At the OECD we developed the “Global Competencies Framework”. This is already being integrated in PISA.

Global competencies is the capacity to examine and take into account global and local perspectives, tolerance to other views, values and cultures and to act for collective well-being and sustainable development.

Empathy, compassion, open mindedness are key.  Thinking beyond their own good lives and jobs.

It sounds obvious, but at this very moment in history, we seem to be in great shortage of these qualities, particularly among leaders in many countries.

To achieve this, what’s the role of education institutions? The one that can provide the following:

Instead of learning in silos, we need the capacity to think across disciplines, to connect ideas and construct information. We need libre penseurs, that are well aware of international developments and risks.

And with the rise of fake news and social media echo chambers, we need individuals with the ability to distinguish fact from fiction. Critical thinking will be essential in our digital age.

How can education serve to fulfill this mission?

By nurturing students’ strong moral compasses throughout their education process, so that they will be able to develop future technologies that respect human rights, promote tolerance and uphold democratic values. This mission is well in line with the Principles of AI that the OECD delivered last year.

And these broad skillsets are in high demand in today’s job market. Recent evidence from the OECD Skills for Jobs database[2] shows that employers typically place a high premium on transversal skills such as teamwork, adaptability, problem-solving, and communication when hiring new graduates. The famous socio emotional skills.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The context we are living in challenges us to think outside the box.  This is why we launched the graduate course of Economic Diplomacy with Enrico, Peter and others, trying to promote exactly these skills for students to thrive in an international setting.

The broader definition of the value of skills in the digital world, goes hand in hand with the effort that the OECD has been making to advance a people’s centered agenda for growth.

For many decades, economic growth has been the main objective of economic policy, and we always assumed that growth would trickle down.

With increased inequalities of income and opportunities, with the constant depletion of natural resources, impending climate emergency, social unrest among the most stable countries like Chile, the rise of populism and nationalism, conflictual ways of dealing with these issues, this growth model need to be re-thought.

It has not even delivered to improve productivity and growth!

This is why we launched NAEC and IG that are calling for a growth path that puts people’s well being at the center, that is inclusive and sustainable.

The skills that are required for this, and to shape the technological revolution in a way that serves humanity, will certainly contribute more to the achievement of the SDGs, the Paris Agreement and to a more peaceful world.

Institutions like yours are at the centre of this agenda and it was my pleasure to share our views with you.

Thank you.

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[1] OECD (2019), Education at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/f8d7880d-en.

[2] Box 3.1 (OECD, 2017[9])