Closing the Digital Gender Gap among Foreign University Students: The Challenges Ahead

Abstract

In today’s world, new and advanced forms of technology are increasingly providing great changes in universities, thus generating new possibilities and impacting pedagogy and learning methodology. Unfortunately, not all students can use these tools in the same way and with the same ability. Not only are there digital gender gaps that limit women from enjoying these learning opportunities, but there are also digital gaps between foreign and natives’ students who have been trained in these technologies in their countries of origin, which impedes the achievement of the sustainable development goals planned for 2030. This study addresses theoretical foundations on the digital gender gap in university studies and provides an econometric analysis, through a simple linear regression, on the existence of a correlation between this digital gender gap and the university study gap by gender. A more specific analysis is also presented on the digital gender gap in the case of foreign students from four groups of countries, according to their income. The results show, on one hand, that differences in the access and use of technologies represent one of the factors that affects the percentage of graduates in higher education by gender; on the other, that there is a highly visible digital divide between countries with high income, compared to low- and lower-middle-income countries.

South African Postgraduate STEM Students’ Use of Mobile Digital Technologies to Facilitate Participation and Digital Equity during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The term innovation is intrinsically interconnected to the idea of a change in educational practice in terms of novelty and transformation to improve educational processes [10]. In other words, the emphasis shifts from memorization, rote learning, teacher centeredness towards active learning, critical thinking, problem-solving, student-centeredness, self-regulation, deep learning, and collaboration.…”

Gender gaps in the impact of the pandemic on the use of ICT in higher education

“…In the specific field of higher education, it has also been shown that gender inequalities in terms of access to certain university studies are positively correlated with gender gaps in ICT use. That is, among students of degrees in which there is a higher proportion of males (usually scientific‐technical degrees), gender inequalities are greater (Kerras et al., 2022). On the other hand, in the specific field of digital competence of higher education professors, this is recognised by the specialised literature as unequal between males and females.…”

“…These inequalities are a reflection of the sociocultural circumstances in which professors are immersed and also cause gender inequalities in the use of ICT to be perpetuated through the students they educate (Gómez‐Trigueros & Yáñez‐de‐Aldecoa, 2021). In addition, the digital gender gap of professors is also diverse according to the area of knowledge, being greater in more technical areas (Kerras et al., 2022). For that reason, the measures that many universities have taken to try to increase the presence of women in science and technology degrees have been effective in reducing the digital gender gap (Corejova et al., 2019).…”

How Gender, Culture, and Economy Influence Field of Study Preferences in Higher Education: Exploring Gender Gaps in STEM, AHSS, and Medicine among International Students

“…The specialized literature reveals more explanations for gender imparity in different fields and academic disciplines [23,25,26], but empirical findings undermine their explanatory power [27]. Some of these explanations focus on microlevel factor effects, such as cognitive skills specific to each gender, perceived self-efficacy in various study fields, gender role socialization, and gender beliefs and stereotypes [13,[28][29][30]; for a review, see [31].…”