Bridging the Digital Gender Divide for Women Entrepreneurs

The “Bridging the Digital Gender Divide” project was a response through capacity building to the urgent need to bridge the digital gender divide and equip women entrepreneurs around the world with the necessary digital skills for their own economic empowerment. The project offered a high-quality digital skills training program to young women entrepreneurs and experienced women entrepreneurs, particular from developing and LDCs. The project also organized an annual open innovation competition in which pre-selected winners will be brought together to develop a women empowerment ecosystem. The project was built on leveraged on other related ITU initiatives such as the ITU Innovation Challenges and the Digital Skills Badges. 

The project also contributed to the Women’s Entrepreneurship Accelerator (WEA). The WEA is a multi-partnership initiative on women’s entrepreneurship launched in 2019 and convening International Labour Organization, International Trade Centre, UN Global Compact, UN Development Programme, UN Women and Mary Kay Inc. to empower 5 million women entrepreneurs by 2030. The goal of the initiative is to maximize the development impact of women entrepreneurship in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by creating an enabling ecosystem for women entrepreneurs around the world. The WEA exemplifies the transformational power of a multi-partnership of unique magnitude to harness the potential of women entrepreneurs.