Digital transformation promotes gender equality in mountainous areas

Van Kieu women in Ta Long commune, Dakrong district livestream to introduce Ta Long specialty purple sticky rice - Photo: TCL

Once considered a technological "lowland", in recent years, smartphones have penetrated quite quickly into the stilt houses of ethnic minorities. According to Vice President of the Women's Union of A Bung commune, Dakrong district, Ho Thi Nghim, thanks to propaganda and mobilization work, the participation of departments, branches, and unions, and the support of social organizations, it has positively impacted people's thinking and lifestyle. The more women participate in collective activities, the more they realize that they themselves need to integrate, become more progressive, more confident, independent, and more economically proactive. Therefore, they themselves need to be equipped with smartphones to connect with the constant changes of society.

Since 2022, Project 8 “Achieving gender equality and solving urgent issues for women and children” has been widely implemented in ethnic minority areas, with contents emphasizing the role of women in sustainable development. In particular, the digital transformation (DT) criterion, focusing on the application of 4.0 technology to the development of livelihood groups, cooperatives (CGTs), and cooperatives (CGTs) owned and co-owned by women, is considered an important tool to narrow the gender gap, enhance economic empowerment and access to information for women.

In mountainous districts, the Provincial Women's Union organized 2 training courses on safe social network usage skills, skills in applying software to create videos and clips to promote gender equality for 110 union officials; 3 training courses on skills in designing and building gender equality communication newsletters on digital platforms for 135 officials working on gender equality in Project 8 communes. At the same time, the Department of Information and Communications (formerly) organized a training course on IT application skills, supporting the enhancement of economic empowerment for 60 ethnic minority women in Ban Chua, Cam Lo district.

The Provincial Women's Union has directed the District Women's Unions to organize many practical activities to support members: organizing 3 training conferences, consulting and guiding on technology application support for districts and communes in building livelihood groups and teams with 145 participants. The District Women's Unions organized a conference to train IT application skills to support economic empowerment for ethnic minority women for district and commune Women's Union officials; group leaders and deputy group leaders of cooperatives and groups led by women; organized training courses on knowledge and skills to access the market, sell online for union officials and group members... Many Pa Ko and Van Kieu women learned for the first time how to use image design tools, create content, and promote brands on social networking platforms. The women enjoyed practicing and were proficient in using applications such as: Capcut, Chat GPT, skillfully creating digital content on TikTok, Facebook, Zalo, ...

Thanks to the people's knowledge of applying digital technology, the activities of Project 8 have been implemented effectively and have created a higher spread. Not participating passively, many people in the project area have learned how to post and live stream the activities they participate in, so the events have increasingly attracted the attention of many people, promoting propaganda work in the locality. Many ethnic minority women who previously only knew how to go to the fields and garden now know how to post information about selling bananas, learn to cook online, and livestream to bring local products to the market. Furthermore, they bring community tourism in their villages and hamlets to be named on the tourism "map" of the province.

“Each village has people who are good at filming, speaking, and editing videos with apps. They choose their own topics and tell their own stories, that is mastery. Digital transformation for ethnic women does not need to be too complicated, as long as it is appropriate and easy to access,” said Ho Thi Thuong, Chairwoman of the Women's Union of Ta Long Commune, Dakrong District.

Despite positive signs, the promotion of digital transformation associated with GHG emissions in the highlands still faces many barriers. The application of science and technology activities still faces difficulties, due to the lack of models that meet the support conditions, and the implementation work must be coordinated with many sectors.

People's awareness is still limited, women are used to backward and fragmented production practices, so the application of digital technology into production still has many obstacles. Resources to support model building are limited, so the target of supporting livelihood groups, cooperatives, and cooperatives to apply science and technology is difficult to achieve. The lack of on-site technical support personnel is also one of the difficulties for training. Training courses are mainly short-term, there is no long-term support mechanism, and trainees' practice has not met the set results...

Despite many challenges, experience from implementing Project 8 shows that digital transformation needs to come from women's needs: women not only need technology to serve their entertainment needs but also learn for practical purposes such as how to raise healthy children and sell agricultural products online. It is necessary to invest in and expand the community core of women in communication groups and teams such as self-managed technical support networks. Prioritizing multimedia communication in ethnic languages: clips, infographics, short videos in Vietnamese - Pa Ko, Van Kieu... is a practical direction. In addition, it is necessary to coordinate with other resources to have more support for digital skills training, creating long-term changes in the application of digital technology in people's practical lives.

The road ahead is still full of difficulties. But from the sparkling eyes of ethnic minority women when livestreaming to sell products, from the joy of girls when they know how to use their phones to design videos to participate in the contest... it can be believed that the mountainous ethnic minority areas will not be left out of the digital transformation wave if there is the right, persistent and humane participation of all levels, sectors, organizations, programs, projects and the whole community.

Tran Cat Linh

Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/chuyen-doi-so-thuc-day-binh-dang-gioi-o-vung-cao-193501.htm