The future of drones is female
By: Katarzyna Chojnacka
Tags: Gender Equality, Drones, Women In Tech, Humanitarian, Bolivia

Women in Bolivia leverage technology in humanitarian work

From the traditional cholitas fighting in the rings of El Alto and climbing the peaks of the Andean mountains, to acclaimed researchers and scientists — Bolivian society champions independent and strong women. With technology opening up new opportunities, female drone operators now appear on the horizon.

Unmanned Aircraft Systems? Drones and gender

The World Food Programme (WFP) and Bolivia’s Vice Ministry of Defence (VIDECI) organized a week-long Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) training in December 2018 to strengthen local capacity for emergency preparedness and response. Thirty-five representatives from ten organizations attended the UAS training. While men dominated in numbers, it was clear among participants that there was no disparity between genders and the ability to operate drones.

“Women have the same capacity as men to use any type of technology. We just need to dedicate time to learn the handling of equipment and software for analysis and processing of drone images,” says Julieta Vargas from a local non-governmental organization (NGO), Practical Action. With a smile she adds, “Men might have a slight advantage, as they tend to play more computer games which have controllers similar to those of drones”.

Although women do not lack capacity with drones, the gap in access to education and the perception of male dominance in certain fields including science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as well as information and communications technology (ICT) is evident. “Women face barriers to enter the technological job market but it is just a stigma, not a scientific difference,” says Jennie Lum, Business Support Assistant at United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) who joined the training from Panama. She admits that most of the drone pilots at UNHRD Panama are male, which reinforces the trend of women underrepresented in technology-focused studies and occupations (European Commission, 2018). According to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNSECO), only 30 per cent of researchers worldwide are women. In some areas like ICT, that number plummits down as low as 3 per cent. Bolivia is leading the way, with women accounting for 63 per cent of researchers across sectors compared to 26 per cent in France and 8 per cent in Ethiopia (UNESCO, 2019). Women recognition in this field is fundamental to show that jobs are genderless.

For the United Nations (UN), gender equality is essential to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Increasingly, there are many global efforts to encourage female participation in technology fields including the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)-led Girls in ICT Day and the African Girls Can CODE initiative by the African Union Commission, UN Women and ITU. The latter was attended by 80 girls from 34 African countries in August 2018 — among them, a group working on a SMS-controlled drone to dispense life-saving medicine in rural areas of Africa (UN Women, 2018). Similar initiatives are now taking off in Bolivia: In March 2018 a regional event related to Stanford University’s Global Women in Data Science (WiDS) — took place in La Paz (Stanford University, 2019).

Female cooperation in (Practical) Action

For Julieta Vargas who works in risk management and climate change, the UAS training was her first encounter with drones and she is now capable of operating multi-rotor systems as well as creating maps and 3D models from obtained imagery. “Drones give me an extra tool for my work. Right now, for geographic information systems (GIS), we use satellite images which don’t always have ideal resolution. Drone pictures allow for a better analysis of vegetation types and their characteristics,” says Julieta, who develops maps to assess threats and vulnerabilities to native wetland vegetation or bofedales. “Currently, to monitor these plants indigenous to Bolivian mountains, we need to [physically] go in person to reach some areas. With drones, this task will no longer have to be done manually,” she says.

Drones to aid climate change adaptation

“After this training, it is clear that there are many uses for drones in our work — collecting information for early warning, emergency preparedness and disaster response. By using drones, we will be better positioned to assist the government in responding to disasters in this country,” says Elisabeth Faure, WFP Country Director for Bolivia. “Bolivia is one of the countries most impacted by climate change in Latin America, causing communities to move from their homes, as they cannot make a living anymore. We can now use drones to monitor the effects of climate change and help the most vulnerable,” she adds. Climate-related disasters tend to have a greater impact on those who rely on traditional ways of living (farming, animal herding) as well as people living in poverty.

Drones are now finding their way into civilian and humanitarian operations. As new applications of the technology are discovered, more and more women are increasingly looking to the skies and taking charge of drone controllers.