Section 2 | FOUNDATIONAL FACTORS risks related to low levels of digital literacy among women, only 13 percent of whom can locate and adjust account and/or apps settings on their mobile phones.99 Figure 6: Frequency of Expressed Gender-Specific Safety Concerns Associated with ICT Access Figure #: Frequency of Expressed Gender-Specific Safety Concerns Associated with ICT Access note: Value for Expressed Concerns for Online Males=0 Dangerous for Males 26 Dangerous for Females 11 Non-specific Danger 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 “Kids can now access inappropriate materials and run into risks—like young girls meeting men they don’t know online and then disappearing. There is lots of cyber harassment. Even one of our members receives harassing messages from random men. As an older woman, she knows not to respond. But younger girls often do not know better.” —Rural CSO representative Frequency SPECIAL FOCUS: GENDER & EDUCATION While poverty and low return on investment in education are undoubtedly driving factors in Myanmar’s low completion rates overall (see section 3.3 below), gender norms subtly influence familial decision making around education. In 2012, one rural assessment in Shan State found that, with slight differences among ethnic groups, in general parents indicated that they would prefer to remove a son from school, if forced to choose. This was explained as because boys have more earning power than daughters,100 which is indeed the case in Myanmar. At the same time, the drastic drop in completion rates for girls between primary and secondary (from 81 percent in grade 5 to 46 percent in grade 9) underscores that this preference is often outweighed by other considerations, including the need for daughters’ unpaid household labor and concerns about health and safety of adolescent girls attending schools without adequate water, sanitation, or hygiene facilities.101 Although sex-disaggregated data on university graduates by areas of study is unavailable, insights into how gender norms affect digital skills acquisition can be gleaned from key informants and focus-group respondents. When asked specifically about ICT skills, discussants described how girls are encouraged to study subjects like law, business administration, accounting—and ICTs only insofar as they support these pursuits, such as office productivity software (e.g., the Microsoft Office suite of products)—whereas boys are encouraged to study engineering, software programming, hardware repair, audio/video editing, and other ICT professional tracks. This gendered socialization of educational preferences begins within the family, where girls are not encouraged to apply to or attend educational institutions or courses in certain fields; this is reinforced by peers and educators. The resultant differences in access to and development of skills—advanced ICT skills, 99 100 101 Galpaya et al., Mobile Phones, Internet, Information and Knowledge. UNDP, Gender Analysis Around Inle Lake. ADB et al., Gender Equality and Women’s Rights in Myanmar, 102. Ending the Gender Digital Divide in Myanmar: A Problem-Driven Political Economy Assessment | 34