Section 1 | GLOBAL CONTEXT KEY GENDER ISSUES Broadly speaking, all women in Myanmar face occupational segregation, a 30 percent wage gap, and extremely limited opportunities for public leadership at all levels. Although national rates of girls’ primary and secondary enrollment and completion rates are slightly higher than those for boys, subtle educational and entrepreneurial barriers exist, such as requirements for females students to score higher on university entrance exams in certain fields and land titles that list women only as dependents, restricting access to finance for women-owned businesses.61 At the same time, there are large variations in the opportunities and constraints experienced by various groups of women within Myanmar. Rural and ethnic minority women are disproportionately affected by: • lack of ICT access (beyond mobile phones) and digital skills training outside urban areas. • lack of accessible and relevant online content due to higher rates of female illiteracy in multilingual areas. • highly gendered labor patterns in agricultural areas (including longer hours of unpaid household work). • constrained mobility in isolated and conflict-affected areas, especially at night (which hampers skills training and employment opportunities). • more female-headed households in conflict-affected areas. “Gender relations are deeply embedded within a cultural or religious ‘coat’ which has made it difficult to put gender inequality onto the public agenda. Deeply held views passed on over generations also mean that hierarchical gender relations have become internalized among both men and women, making them not only hard to see, but also very hard to question. The result, according to women’s rights activists, has been that gender inequality claims are often brushed aside, denied or belittled.” —Gender Equality and Social Norms in Myanmar, 2015 For example, entrance to the Yangon Institute of Technology requires a score of 396 for women and 380 for men. See Mia Urbano and Tony Dickinson, Women and the Economy in Myanmar: An Assessment of DFAT’s Private Sector Development Programs (Canberra: Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2016). 61 Ending the Gender Digital Divide in Myanmar: A Problem-Driven Political Economy Assessment | 23