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Gender and ICT policy.
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“The information society cannot be complete without the active engagement and involvement of African women, who play a major role in reaching out and disseminating information to different communities.” Lettie Longwe, WSIS-Gender Caucus Secretariat


In the last decades ICT has become a powerful and widespread communications platform, particularly given the convergence of existing communications media with new communication technologies. ICT can be used to increase access to employment, education or health services; strengthen democracy; improve transparency; provide a platform for diverse voices; and cross-cultural knowledge exchange. The social, political and economic changes wrought by new information and communications technology have prompted certain shifts in development thinking. Development strategists now see, as recognized for example in the UN Millennium Declaration, the need to adapt ICTs as a way to avoid further marginalization, and also as a potential force for creating new economic growth opportunities and for pushing democratic boundaries

The digital divide between the developed and developing world in access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) is the result of various factors beyond infrastructure, including poverty, lack of resources, illiteracy and low levels of education. In many societies women are the most impoverished with the least access to resources and with little control over decisions that affect their lives. For this reason, women are on the wrong side of the digital divide, with limited access to and control over ICTs.

When considering the factors that contribute to these inequalities it is important to understand the ways in which ICTs are allocated between women and men (the gendered allocation of ICTs), the different opportunities that exist for men and women with respect to education, training and skills development, employment and working conditions, content development and access to power structures and decision-making processes.

World secondary school enrolment statistics show that only 11% have achieved gender equality and 51% have a lower enrolment ratio for girls than boys.
In 2003 women earned in formal market on average, 79 -75 per cent of what men earned. Men more likely are hired in regular and better-paid positions, while women are increasingly being hired in peripheral, insecure, less-valued jobs including home-based, casual or temporary work. (ILO, Global Employment trends for women 2004)
The factors listed above influence the fact that the great majority of the world's women have no access to internet or to any other sort of modern communication system, and possibly will not in their lifetime.

But providing women with connectivity is not enough. Beyond questions of access to technology and software, other major concerns must to be addressed such as the need to break down gender and cultural barriers to women’s access to careers in technology, or absence of women in decision-making structures


March 31, 2008 | 2:47 PM Comments  1 comments

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kenniecee KENNIECEE
April 1, 2008 | 9:13 AM

The issue of gender inequality should continually be discouraged amongst us in other to really benefit from the God given talents and potentials deposited in these women.thank God for women.
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