​Background

Women's digital empowerment and their full participation in the information society is a key objective of UN Women and ITU. UN Women has prioritized this within all aspects of its work and the ITU Council at its 2013 session, adopted the ITU Gender Equality and Mainstreaming Policy (GEM). Realizing these goals within the development context presents many opportunities as well as challenges. While the potential is great and there are many examples of progress, there are also gaps and a need for increased attention, visibility, understanding, investment and action.

This annual award seeks to create a platform for advancing women's meaningful engagement with ICTs and their role as decision-makers and producers within this sector. In considering "gender equality mainstreaming" we are looking not only at ICT, government and development actors that are mainstreaming gender equality perspectives within their work, but also ICT and gender advocates that are seeking to "mainstream" gender equality into a larger context.

Objective

The ITU-UN Women GEM-TECH Award will demonstrate a commitment to advancing gender equality and women's empowerment through ICTs.

Format

Open call to all Stakeholders working in the ICT Landscape.