Access is infrastructure: How to build an economy where more women can learn, earn and adapt

International Women’s Day often brings a familiar narrative cycle: commitments, campaigns and the language of intention. Intention matters, but it is not the binding constraint.

The binding constraint is infrastructure. Lack of infrastructure means lack of access to opportunity and the pathways that enable women to learn, earn, progress and build.

Shamina Singh, Founder and President of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, which focuses on expanding access to economic opportunity, puts it plainly: inclusive economic growth needs to shift from aspiration to execution.

If inclusion is real, it shows up in the systems people move through every day – and this includes women.

Singh frames inclusion as a design-and-delivery discipline that integrates the creative process of designing a product, service or system with the technical details of its implementation. In essence, design determines who the system works for, while delivery determines whether access turns into outcomes, at scale.

Yet data shows that women are less likely to be included in the design of processes and services. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025, less than a third (29.5%) of tertiary-educated senior managers are women. Women are also 55.2% more likely than men to take career breaks, and spend longer time away from work – often due to parental requirements.

At the same time, we often default to explanations about confidence when it comes to women in the professional world. We recycle the line that men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of qualifications, while women wait until they feel they reach 100%. Then comes the advice: be more assertive, lean in because it is actionable for women and cost-free for institutions.

As Singh’s points out: “Inclusion fails most often not because of lack of intent, but because systems were optimized for those already inside them.”

At the design stage, Singh argues, we must start with lived realities rather than averages or assumptions. If lived reality includes low connectivity, limited devices, safety risks and time poverty, inclusion cannot be layered on later.

The digital economy assumes people can simply log on. Many cannot. According to the International Telecommunication Union, only 74% of the world’s population uses the internet and in low-income countries, usage is around 23%. At the same time, women are 10% less likely to own a mobile phone.

This is why “AI literacy for all” can become performative when the basic digital infrastructure is missing.

Young Global Leader (YGL) Nino Enukidze says this is an engineering problem, not a messaging problem. As Rector of Business and Technology University and Founder of Coding School for Women in Georgia, she has built a pathway that has reached more than 10,000 women and girls, and extended that logic into artificial intelligence (AI) literacy through AI4Globe, recognized by UNESCO.

“There is a very high risk to increase the digital divide… not everybody has access to computer, to high speed internet… or even an understanding of what AI is,” says Enukidze.

And once access expands, safety – the ability for women and girls to use digital and AI tools without being exposed to avoidable harm such as poor privacy protections, scams or harassment – becomes part of the infrastructure, not an add-on.

“The lack of infrastructure is one problem, but once you open this infrastructure… there is another problem, which is the data privacy, cyber hygiene,” she adds.

Accordingly, Enukidze insists that products and systems must be designed around constraints such as trust and safety, affordability, accessibility and time burden. These constraints are not abstract for women, they shape whether women can participate at all and whether they participate safely and consistently. Inclusion that ignores these constraints is not inclusive. It is theoretical.

Design is only the first pillar to bridging the access gap. Delivery is the second.

Inclusive economic growth only becomes operational when access reliably converts into skills, markets and protection at scale. Entry points are not enough. The work lies in translating participation into income and progression.

The World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025 states that 59% of the workforce is expected to need training by 2030, and employers cite skills gaps as the leading barrier to transformation (63%).

Skills are necessary, but they are not sufficient. We tend to measure enrolments and certificates while outcomes remain optional.

Instead, Enukidze measures what matters: “This is the KPI for us… the number of employed women in tech,” she says. “Connection to employers and networks that convert learning into measurable economic outcome is the most important thing.”

That is the difference between training that looks good on paper and a pathway to opportunity that holds up in the labour market.

If entry is the first pillar and conversion the second, progression is the third. This is where careers either compound or quietly stall, especially after breaks.

YGL Yifan Hou, a chess Grandmaster from China, four-time Women’s World Chess Champion and a professor at Peking University, calls out the gap between slogans and substance.

“We need to check whether they really did something or they just take this as a kind of slogan.” She says. “There are not so many doors that open up for girls, what is missing is a real sponsor or real support.”

Her recommendation is structural, not motivational. In essence, change the opportunity architecture rather than telling girls to simply build confidence in a system that keeps their options narrow.

“Provide structural opportunity instead of teaching the girls how to play the game, invite them to compete with the Masters,” Hou explains.

After all, even when women do everything the system asks, the payoff can remain asymmetric. The Future of Jobs Report 2025 shows that the marginal wage premium from moving into higher job zones is higher for men at 44%, than for women at 30%.

Entrepreneurship is often framed as being just down to having personal grit. But, in practice, it is shaped by access to capital, distribution, credibility and tools that reduce the friction between expertise and income.

YGL Doone Roisin, Founder and CEO of Female Startup Club, has built a media and community platform that helps women founders build visibilty, credibility and reach. She drew from 750+ interviews with successful women in business and succeeded in building a seven-figure online business herself.

She also offers a practical lesson in execution. The traditional online rulebook told her to wait for 100,000 podcast downloads before monetizing. She did not. “I had 2,000 downloads… I landed a deal for $25,000,” says Roisin.

Then she names a barrier that acts like a structural tax on ambition and visibility, saying: “The cost of success is embarrassment.”

In practice, she is pointing to women’s social penalty of being visible. The fear of being judged, mocked or dismissed for putting yourself forward. When women are scrutinized more harshly and afforded fewer safety attempts, that embarrasment becomes a tax on experimentation, visibility and growth.

If embarrassment is the tax, the answer is not merely having thicker skin. The answer is infrastructure that lowers the cost of trying: stronger communities, clearer playbooks, accessible monetization rails and credibility pathways that do not require permission.

If access is infrastructure, what does that require?

If the goal is positive outcomes for women, participation metrics are not enough. A real pathway shows up in conversion and progression: women getting online safely, translating skills into paid work, progressing in roles and pay, and re-entering the labour market without penalty after breaks.

If you cannot measure that, it is probably a programme that looks good on paper – not infrastructure.

Inclusion fails when systems are built for the few and retrofitted for the rest. Execution means building them differently from the start to ensure more women can learn, earn and adapt.