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Women's Empowerment in the Digital Age

Side Event: Women's Empowerment in the Digital Age - Implementing WSIS Outcomes and Agenda 2030

This side event on the occasion of the WSIS+10 Summit was organized by the Governments of Costa Rica, Tunisia, Sweden, Switzerland and United States of America with ITU, UN Women, Microsoft, Mozilla and the Association for Progressive Communication.

Practical Details

Date and time: Tuesday, 15 December 2015, 1.00 – 2:45 PM
Venue: UN Headquarters, Conference Room 6, NYC, USA
Languages: English
Communiqué: Partners launch action plan to close digital gender gap

ACTION PLAN

Snapshot on the Agenda

Light Lunch served from 1 - 1.15 pm (Vienna Café)

Introduction by H.E. Mr Noomane Fehri, Minister of Communication Technologies and Digital Economy of the Republic of Tunisia
Presentation of GEM Tech Award 2015 Winners by Mr Malcolm Johnson, Deputy Secretary-General, ITU
Panel Discussion

Panelists:
H.E. Ms Anusha Rehman Khan, Minister of State for IT and Telecommunications, Pakistan
H.E. Ms Maja Fjaestad, State Secretary, Swedish Prime Minister’s Office
H.E. Ms Catherine Novelli, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, USA

Ms Mitchell Baker, Executive Chairwoman of Mozilla
Ms Anriette Esterhuysen, Executive Director, APC

Moderator: Ms Doreen Bogdan, Chief of Strategic Planning and Membership Department, ITU

Discussion with the Audience
Introduction of the Action Plan by Ms Lakshmi Puri, Deputy Executive Director, UN Women
Closing remarks by H.E. Mr Philipp Metzger, Director of the Federal Office of Communications, Switzerland

Background note

2015 is a landmark year for women's empowerment in multilateral and international fora. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which was adopted by UN Member States in September, identifies ICTs as key enablers of development and as an essential component of transformative solutions to meet today's development challenges. The catalytic power of ICTs for development is recognized as holding 'great promise for human progress' and cited specifically in 4 of the 17 goals and indicated as a cross cutting tool to be utilized for the achievement of all of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Read the full background note

Photos
Webcast
Links and Resources

Photos from the session are available here

Webcast available at: http://webtv.un.org

ITU- UN Women Gender Equality and Mainstreaming in Technology (GEM-TECH) Awards 2015
14 December 2015, New York, United States
ITU work on gender
WSIS+10 website
ITU Gateway for WSIS

Objective

This side event built on the progress made since the adoption of the Beijing Platform of Action, WSIS and the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. It provided an opportunity to identify and review challenges and possible solutions to address women's empowerment in the digital age. The meeting was also seeking for the stakeholders' commitment to close the gender gap in ICTs and celebre the GEM-Tech Award 2015 winners as role models for the international community. Concluding with the adoption of an Action Plan, this meeting aimed to set out the framework for critical actions to accelerate inclusive, sustainable development.

2015 is a landmark year for women's empowerment in international fora. The Agenda 2030 adopted by UN Member States this September identifies ICTs as key enablers of development. The catalytic power of ICTs for development is recognized as holding 'great promise for human progress' and ICTs are cited in 4 of the 17 goals. SDG 5 – 'Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls' – contains an implementation target reinforcing the role of ICTs for gender equality: Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women (SDG 5b). In July, the post-2015 development agenda was underpinned by a global framework for financing development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.

The inclusion of women is vital for the shift towards development and poverty eradication, yet persistent concerns regarding gender equality remain. Exactly 20 years ago, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action 1995 called for the 'full and equal participation of women' in and through media and new technologies of communication; yet in 2014, there were just 16 women ICT Ministers in the 193 ITU Member States, and ITU estimates that 200 million fewer women than men around the world have Internet access – and the digital gender gap may well be widening. Given that over 95% of jobs today have a digital component, if women are not adequately trained, they will have reduced access to employment and will face social exclusion.

It is more than a decade since world leaders at the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS) affirmed that ICT development provides enormous opportunities for women. They committed to ensuring that the Information Society enables women's empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society and in all decision-making processes. The recently adopted WSIS+10 Outcome Document (Geneva 2014) recognizes the potential of ICTs as a tool for promoting gender equality in ICTs. The effective implementation of the WSIS Action Lines can help accelerate the achievement of the SDGs and to that end, all stakeholders should renew efforts to ensure the convergence of development processes.

About GA High-level Meeting, WSIS+10

The General Assembly High-level Meeting on the overall review of the implementation of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society took place on 15-16 December 2015 at the UN Headquarters in New York.

This high-level meeting provided an opportunity for in-depth discussions on important issues in the implementation of the WSIS outcomes, including the progress, gaps and challenges, as well as areas for future actions.

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