Around 70 percent of women in Saudi Arabia believe that digital enables them to work from home and has increased their access to job opportunities
Around 90 percent of women in Saudi Arabia use digital to prepare for and find work
More than two-thirds of women in developing countries find Internet important to their education
Globally, digital-savvy women are helping to close the gender gap in the workplace. And digital fluency, the extent to which people embrace and use digital technologies to become more knowledgeable, connected and effective, plays a key role in helping women achieve gender equality and level the playing field.
A new research report from Accenture, "Getting to Equal: How Digital is Helping Close the Gender Gap at Work", provides empirical proof that women are using digital skills to gain an edge in preparing for work, finding work and advancing at work. While women still lag behind men in digital fluency in all but a handful of countries, improving their digital skills can change the picture.
If governments and businesses can double the pace at which women become digitally fluent, gender equality could be achieved in 25 years in developed nations, versus 50 years at the current pace. Gender equality in the workplace could be achieved in 45 years in developing nations, versus 85 years at the current pace.
"Digital fluency enables access to education, workforce flexibility and new avenues of finding employment," said Omar Boulos, Accenture's regional managing director for Middle East and North Africa. "Because women are underrepresented in the workforce in most countries, they are a significant source of untapped talent-- and by extension; this untapped talent has the most to gain from digital fluency. With governments in GCC emphasizing on developing human capital through education and training to achieve economic goals, strengthening digital skills is mission-critical in creating a workforce that is adaptable, agile and aware of the emerging challenges of future economies."
Although digital fluency helps women advance in their careers, its impact has not closed the gender gap among executives - or extended to pay equality. Men are still, by far, the dominant earners by household for all three generations. This will change as more millennial women and digital natives move into management.
In Saudi Arabia, women use digital to prepare for and find work more frequently than men (90 percent and 72 percent, respectively). Yet, the research found that, when women and men have the same level of digital proficiency, women are better at leveraging it to find work. Nearly 70 percent (66 percent) of all survey respondents in Saudi Arabia - men and women combined--agreed that digital enables them to work from home; 64 percent said it provides a better balance between personal and professional lives; and 70 percent report digital has increased access to job opportunities.
However, digital fluency has also had a more positive impact on the education of women in developing countries like Saudi Arabia. More than two-thirds (68 percent) of women compared to 44 percent of women in developed countries said that the Internet was important to their education. Survey data also shows that women in developing countries are much more positive about the power digital has to level the playing field for women, 80 percent and 62 percent, respectively.
Accenture report highlighted the importance of digital fluency in helping countries progress toward equality in the workplace. Differences in the digital fluency of men and women, and between countries today, mean every country is at a different stage of this journey and must address a different set of priorities.
Accenture survey revealed that men use digital more frequently than women: 76 percent of men versus 72 percent of women. Millennial men use digital channels at the even higher rate of 80 percent, and millennial women at 75 percent.
It further said men are more proactive than women in learning new digital skills: 52 percent of men versus 45 percent of women say they're continuously learning new digital skills.
Accenture study showed that nations with higher rates of digital fluency among women have higher rates of gender equality in the workplace. The US, Netherlands, UK and Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland) have the highest digital fluency scores in the study and rank among the top performers on workplace equality.