Executive Summary IREX INSIGHT Digital skills are the bridge from passive access to meaningful usage of ICTs that maximizes impact on individuals and institutions. Educators and employers must take into account the different challenges women and girls face at each level of the digital skills pyramid. ü QUICK WIN International non-governmental A second key finding is that gender-based differences in individual preferences, institutional rules, and occupational norms strongly influence both means and degree of skills organizations (INGOs) and coalitions like the Myanmar acquisition in Myanmar. It is critically important to redress disparities in skills, despite the Education Consortium should widespread perception of differences as normative and personal choices: digital skills pilot low-cost education are the bridge from passive access to ICTs (as described above) to meaningful usage that tools like open-source e-book maximizes derived benefits for individuals and institutions (as described in the next section). software to enable educators Embed Digital Literacy into Universal Education (Bottom of the Pyramid): and activists to create easily To counter disproportionately superficial ICT use among females in general and replicable, locally relevant strong gender biases in informal skills acquisition in particular, donors and the digital educational materials in government should fully fund already planned formal and informal education initiatives to integrate ICTs, as articulated in the National Education Strategic Plan minority languages.16 2016–2021 and the Public Library Master Plan 2017–2022. Priority should be given to efforts to (a) introduce appropriate tech-enabled pedagogy for low-resource primary and secondary classrooms through both preservice teacher training and inservice training for existing (primarily non–“digital native”) cadres; (b) reach out-of-school adolescent girls and boys through tech-savvy, gender-sensitive, informal educators and infomediaries; and (c) improve and expand mother-tongue instruction, including multigenerational approaches such as digital storytelling, to rapidly expand community-sourced materials from isolated and conflict-affected areas with lower rates of literacy and educational attainment. It is essential for the MoE and its partners to coordinate carefully with the MoTC to align rollout of ICT Advanced Skills Intermediary Skills integration in schools with infrastructure improvements like electricity and highspeed fixed broadband to support applied learning.16 15 Adapted from Desiree van Welsum and Bruno Lanvin, e-Leadership Skills: Vision Report (Brussels: European Commission, 2012). 16 For example, see 10 Steps to Helping Communities Create Early Grade Reading Materials with Bloom, software used by public librarians in the Philippines to co-create more than a thousand new texts in local languages. Basic Skills Digital Skills Pyramid in Myanmar15 Ending the Gender Digital Divide in Myanmar: A Problem-Driven Political Economy Assessment | 7