International Women's Day, celebrated on March 8th every year, is a day to recognize the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women and to call for gender equality. This year, the theme for IWD 2023 is "DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality".

As someone who is passionate about gender equality and the empowerment of all marginalised groups, you understand the importance of education and access to knowledge as tools to achieve these goals. But what about the millions of people around the world who face barriers to education, such as poverty, illiteracy or lack of access to technology? How can we ensure that their voices are heard and their potential is realised?

We are delighted that Audiopedia has been selected for the Digital-X catalogue by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) following an extensive selection process. More than 30 UNDP experts worked to find, match and link ready-to-use digital solutions to the pressing needs of UNDP, UN partners and governments. In the end, 100 solutions were selected from more than 4,000 submissions.

Because of women’s unique biological characteristics and unequal cultural and social status, they are exposed to various reproductive and maternal health problems. In the past decades, the health situation of Sub-Saharan African women has improved significantly but it still lags behind that of other countries. For example, during the period from 2000 to 2017, Sub-Saharan Africa achieved a reduction of 39 percent of maternal mortality (from 870 to 533 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births). However, it still accounts for 68 percent of all maternal deaths per year worldwide (Unicef Data 2020).

Education has always been entwined with class, gender, and ethnicity. Nowhere is this relationship more prominent than Sub-Saharan Africa. According to a UNICEF study, Guinea, the Central African Republic, Senegal, Cameroon, Benin, Niger, and Rwanda are the countries that spend the smallest percentage of public education spending on the poorest households. All of these countries spend 10% or less on educating the poorest households while dedicating 30% to 50% of their public education funds to the wealthiest households.

Many organizations and governments seek to achieve female empowerment through education. Although it is not the only means of achieving it nor the only one stakeholders should be focusing on, it is certainly an important aspect of female empowerment and a powerful tool for change, especially because it allows women to gain access to knowledge that will help them in the agency processes that play a big role in empowering women (Kabeer 2005, 16).

Female empowerment is often thought of as a critical aspect of achieving gender equality. Gender equality has been one of the UN’s greatest priorities for a few decades now: the organization has given it strong consideration in the Sustainable Development 2030 Agenda, in the Millennium Development Goals established in the year 2000, and in the still relevant Beijing Platform for Action from 1995. Worldwide, progress has been made, but Sub-Saharan Africa still remains one of the regions further behind in terms of gender equality and related issues affecting women.

Women’s empowerment can be defined in simple terms as “the process of increasing women’s access to control over the strategic life choices that affect them and access to the opportunities that allow them fully to realize their capacities” (Chen and Tanaka 2014). Because of its positive connotations, the word “empowerment” has become a comfortable and indisputable term, which has led to a wide range of institutions, organizations, and governments to adopt it as something they aspire to work towards (Papart, Rai, and Staudt 2003, 3).