Power on: How we can supercharge an equitable digital future.

From online learning and digital activism to the rapid expansion of high-paying tech jobs, the digital age has generated unprecedented opportunities for the empowerment of women and girls. But advancing technology is also introducing new forms of inequality and heightened threats to their rights and well-being.

Women and girls remain underrepresented across the creation, use and regulation of technology. They are less likely to use digital services or enter tech-related careers, and significantly more likely to face online harassment and violence. This limits not only their own digital empowerment but also the transformative potential of technology as a whole-over the past decade, women's exclusion from the digital sphere has shaved $1 trillion off the GDP of low- and middle-income countries. In the face of escalating global crises, we stand at a crossroads: allow technology to widen existing disparities and further concentrate power in the hands of the few, or put it to work on behalf of a safer, more sustainable, more equitable future for all. The choices we make today will profoundly impact our path forward. Here are four steps we can take in the right direction.

As our daily lives become increasingly digitalized, gender gaps in digital access threaten to leave women and girls even further behind. Though efforts to close these gaps have led to improvements in the gender parity score, the absolute gap between men and women's access has actually increased by 20 million since 2019. Today, 63 per cent of women have access to the internet, compared to 69 per cent of men. And women are 12 per cent less likely to own a mobile phone, a figure virtually unchanged since before the pandemic.

These global averages don't tell the whole story: race, age, disability, socioeconomic status and location all play a role in determining women's digital access and use. Marginalized groups such as older women, rural women and women with disabilities face significantly greater barriers to connectivity. In the least developed countries-where, despite mobile broadband signals covering 76 per cent of the population, only 25 per cent is connected-men are 52 per cent more likely to be within that online minority.

All of which makes clear that bridging access gaps will require more than just better digital infrastructure. Addressing factors like affordability, access to electricity, online privacy and safety, social norms and digital skills and literacy-all of which...