Women’s Empowerment Through the Use of Technology

Abstract

Technology has shaped people’s lifestyles globally. Today, the majority of the world’s population seeks help through technology as a portal to learning with the wide variety of learning materials available. Women in both developed and developing countries can access learning through technology, yet the scholarly community do not have an up-to-date collective view of how technology is being used to provide learning materials to empower women around the world.  Therefore, this systematic review included an aggregated and qualitative synthesis to investigate extant empirical work over five years, 2017-2021. Following a rigorous PRISMA selection process, 40 articles were included in the final analysis from 80 countries. The findings reveal that the majority (60%) of studies took place in Sub-Saharan Africa. From the grounded coding, five industries emerged as areas providing empowerment through the learning materials: health, agriculture, environment, entrepreneurship, and communication. Women were empowered by learning in three main areas: health, communication, and entrepreneurship. This study provides information for funders, policymakers, advocates, and women. This study revealed areas in need of future research, including additional systematic reviews to explore gray literature not published in scholarly outlets and academic publications published in non-English language journals.