JOBS INTERVENTIONS FOR YOUNG WOMEN IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY
KEY MESSAGES
    •    The gender “digital divide” exacerbates gender gaps in labor participation.
    •    digital jobs can provide a transformational opportunity to close the gender gap by increasing young women’s access to
         earnings, productivity,, and independence.
    •    Digital economy development programs should proactively adopt gender-inclusive strategies.
    •    Digital jobs interventions should integrate supply and demand-side approaches to support youth and also new job creation.
    •    Program teams must identify local constraints young women face in accessing digital employment and starting businesses.
    •    Development actors must scale digital jobs programs and leverage global partnerships like S4YE.

MOTIVATION: WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
Youth employment is a large and global problem, and large gender disparities in work and entrepreneurship are being replicated in
the digital economy; the Internet user gender gap is largest in Least Developed Countries (LDCs). This note focuses on specific design
components in digital jobs programs to make them more gender inclusive.

WHAT ARE WE DOING?
The World Bank’s youth employment portfolio commits over US$17 billion over 140 operations worldwide. Increasingly, projects
include digital skills training, entrepreneurship, and employment for youth; and over 50 percent include strong gender themes.
Programs also increasingly address both labor supply and demand constraints, with innovations and pilot projects in places such as
Nigeria, Kosovo, the West Bank and Gaza, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) training youth skills to access the digital economy,
including online freelancing, and helping firms adopt ICT and engage in e-commerce. Programs increasingly include gender strategies,
including finding ways to help women access and complete training, while helping them start and run businesses.
The World Bank Jobs Group leverages global partnerships to inform digital jobs interventions across its Global Practices, while the Jobs
Umbrella Multi-Donor Trust Fund (Jobs MDTF) funds several activities. In the Digital Jobs for Youth: Young Women in the Digital
Economy report, the MDTF-supported Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) identified four drivers of demand for digital jobs—(i)
Public Sector, (ii) Private Sector, (iii) Online Outsourcing, and (iv) Digital Platforms—to help programs and policymakers better target
investments for different youth populations.

WHAT WORKS?
S4YE’s 2018 annual report outlines challenges and curates a set of design approaches that are being used by projects to
develop more gender-inclusive youth digital jobs programs:
   1. Navigating Shifts in Demand for Digital Skills: Requires assessing market demand for digital skills.
   2. Understanding Gender Differences in Roles, Needs, Opportunities, and Limitations: Requires contextual analysis.
   3. Recruiting Young Women to Digital Jobs Programs: Requires using mixed recruitment techniques, holding
        programs in safe and accessible locations, promoting early age exposure to ICT, and providing financial incentives.
   4. Retaining Female Beneficiaries in Programs: Requires screening applicants, using a blended training approach
        including online and classroom; on-the-job learning schemes, and providing access to ICT infrastructure.
   5. Building Self-Confidence in Young Female Beneficiaries: Requires engaging women in interactive learning,
        developing women’s communication and leadership skills, an providing female role models in jobs programs.
   6. Combating Misperceptions, Stereotypes, and Other Biases against Women: Requires influencing parents, spouses,
        and others to support women, connecting employers to young women, and inclusivity training for employers.
   7. Difficult for Female Entrepreneurs to Access & Control Financial Resources: Requires supporting women’s financial
        inclusion, and connecting entrepreneurs with traditional and alternative funding.
   8. Digital Entrepreneurs Require Skills & Support for Success: Requires training, mentoring, and supporting female
        digital entrepreneurs, and shifting mindsets on women’s roles including through national campaigns.
WHAT’S NEXT?
    •    More research is needed to fill knowledge gaps on how to effectively address women’s needs in digital jobs
         programs, including:
             o More evaluation of existing programs to find best duration, frequency, and intensity of digital jobs
                 programs’ curricula, and how to target most vulnerable youth, especially women.
             o More evidence on effectiveness of different program methods to integrate demand and supply-side
                 components.
    •    Donors, governments, private sector, and other stakeholders should invest in experimentation.
    •    Scale digital jobs programs proven to close the gender digital divide.