Introductory remarks by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-GeneralHigh Level Panel Discussion "Promoting ICT opportunites for women empowerment"
13 September 2018, Durban, South Africa
Welcome to this high level panel discussion on promoting ICT opportunities for women empowerment.
Gender inclusion is a very important objective for ITU, so let me take this opportunity to explain some of our activities:
Firstly, International Girls in ICT Day. Held every year in April, this event is part of a global movement to inspire girls and young women (mostly school girls) to learn more about the amazing opportunities and careers offered by the ICT sector. This year I joined the event in Kumasi, Ghana where 600 school girls were trained on coding and then entered a competition on coding with the 10 winners being awarded iPads, and an ITU branded power pack.
In addition, ITU co-founded with UN Women the EQUALS initiative, which is a network of organizations working together to ensure that women are given access to ICTs, are equipped with ICT skills, and develop the leadership potential to work in the ICT sector. I am sure we hear more of this from Ms Chiwara.
Another of our initiatives is the Digital Skills for Decent Jobs for Youth campaign which together with the International Labour Organization will equip millions of young people with job-ready digital skills.We also have a Digital Skills online Toolkit which provides guidelines on strategies for building the digital skills of women and girls. And ITU is committed to gender equality within its own organization. We encourage women to apply for jobs in ITU, and we encourage our members, 193 governments and over 800 companies and other organisations, to include women on their delegations to ITU meetings and conferences.
As you know ITU collects and disseminates data on ICTs, and this includes the number of individuals accessing and using ICTs, disaggregated by gender, age, education, labour force status, and occupation. This data is analysed to provide evidence of the extent of women's participation in the information society. Unfortunately, this shows that much is still needed to be done.
But one important element in all these efforts is to highlight how successful women can be, and have been, in the ICT sector. Role models are important for everyone, and this is why in 2013 ITU started to award individual women who have been particularly successful and have contributed to improving gender balance in the ICT sector.
Of course, let us not forget that men as well as women have a role to play in improving gender balance, and I am proud to say I myself received such an award on International Women's Day last year from the Geneva Environment Network - as a Visionary and Inspiring Leader – the first man to achieve such an award !
Now, talking about role models, let me turn to our panel. I will start by posing a couple of questions to each panellist to stimulate the discussion, and then open the floor.
