Because I am a Girl - Digital and Urban Frontiers: Girls in a Changing Landscape
CPP Brazil and partners contribute original research to international report on girls and ICT.
The “Because I am a Girl” global campaign of Plan International aims “to fight gender inequality, promote girls' rights and lift millions of girls out of poverty. Across the world, girls face double discrimination due to their gender and age, leaving them suffering at the bottom of the social ladder.”
This year’s report is focused on the development role that technology plays in the life of young girls, particularly in urban areas. The report recognizes that with development opportunities (access to information, safe employment, etc.), there are also risks that girls, and youth in general, need to be aware of such as sexual exploitation through the internet. The report calls on all duty bearers to ensure that girls have equal access to resources and opportunities that technology has to offer while protecting them against potential harm.
CPP was approached by Plan International to help undertake extensive research with Brazilian youth to provide findings for the 2010 report. CPP worked with Brazilian partner organizations to interview boys and girls through focus groups and online surveys in which more than 400 Brazilian youth participated. The purpose of this research was to examine adolescent girls’ rights and protection in Brazil within the context of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
According to the findings, CPP’s reporting in this year’s “Because I am a Girl” shows that, “the use of ICTs was growing very fast, particularly among 15 to 17 year olds, where between 2005 and 2008 there had been the highest percentage increase of all sectors of the population, from 33.7 to 62.9 per cent. The majority of girls in this research had mobile phones (86 per cent) and used the internet (82 per cent). Just over a quarter said they were ‘always online’. For those girls who had access to a computer, they generally spent from one to seven hours a day online” (BIAAG 2010, pg. 130).
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