The digital gender gap as the vertex of the inequalities of women in the context of COVID-19

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the digital divide as the vertex of the structural inequalities that shape the lives of women, in the context of the global Covid-19 pandemic that has placed Information and Communication Technologies (ICT ) at the center of social dynamics. For this, in the first section the concept of digital divide is recovered as a vertex in which inequalities that condition access, use and appropriation of information and communication technologies converge, but also as a cause of them. The implications of gender in the analysis of the digital divide are presented below; and based on this, the potential problems originated by the digital gender gap in the context of COVID are reviewed. The final intention is to insist in the need for policies and programs that attend the digital divide as a product of inequalities, but also as an emerging axis that maintain, reinforce, and renew them.