Thomson Reuters Spotlights Digital Gap for Women-Led Microbusinesses

May 14, 2020 — A Thomson Reuters Foundation feature article, “Digital lifeline for women running Asia’s small businesses,” examines digital access for marginalized groups across Southeast Asia, facing financial pressures long before Covid-19. Go Digital ASEAN is a new digital literacy initiative supported by Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, to train up to 200,000 people in marginalized communities across the region, 60 percent of them women. Read the InAsia blog to learn more.

Ngoc is typical of millions of small business women in the region who are keen to earn but feel locked out of a digital revolution that has mostly helped young men in cities. Now help is at hand, offering hope of a way through the crisis and laying the foundations for better business beyond. Ngoc will get digital training under a scheme for 200,000 people across Southeast Asia, part of efforts to close a digital gap that mostly hurts women and those in rural communities.
 
They often don’t get as many opportunities,” Meloney Lindberg, who leads the initiative at the charity, said by phone from Cambodia. “What we are doing is to bring the opportunity to their neighbourhood.”

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