Section 5 | RECOMMENDATIONS 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 integration in schools with infrastructure improvements like electricity and high-speed fixed broadband to support applied learning.278 Catalyze Potential of Early Adopters to Change Norms (Middle of the Pyramid): Recent gains in women’s access to ICTs279 are tempered by the knowledge that female users remain more likely to use their devices for a narrow range of voice calls and text services. To most effectively expand the skills base of such early adopters—and maximize their potential ripple effect on institutional rules and occupational norms—strong existing government and donor ü QUICK WIN International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and coalitions like the Myanmar Education Consortium should pilot low-cost education tools like open-source e-book support for TVET programs should be tapped to weave a broad repertoire of digital skills software to enable educators into vocational, occupational, and professional training. Focusing on female-dominated and activists to create easily occupations that have a high degree of contact with rural and vulnerable populations in replicable, locally relevant trusted venues, such as educators, librarians, and health workers, will optimize the digital educational materials in downstream impact. minority languages.279 ü QUICK WIN Government and INGO courses can adapt the existing open-source, mobile-first digital literacy curriculum18 available in Burmese into TVET materials used to train female Support Innovation and ICT Jobs (Top of the Pyramid): Reproductive roles significantly limit women’s acquisition of advanced digital skills that translate into ICT-sector professionals such as health and agricultural extension employment, despite their overrepresentation among graduates of both secondary and workers, civil servants, and so tertiary education. To establish a virtuous cycle of better supply and increased demand, on, creating role models and private-sector ICT firms should diversify their talent pools by actively recruiting female staff organically transferring digital for technical rather than administrative positions, to increase digital content, products, skills through existing public and services for an untapped female market. Profit motives and an industry focus on usercentered design combine to make the private sector a champion of this narrow component services. of the gender digital divide. 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 279 As of 2016, 52 percent of women over age fifteen own a mobile phone, and 77 percent of these are smartphones. Galpaya et al., Mobile Phones, Internet, Information and Knowledge. 278 Ending the Gender Digital Divide in Myanmar: A Problem-Driven Political Economy Assessment | 89