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The United Nations Commission
on the Status of Women urges inclusion of a gender dimension in The World Summit
on the Information Society
The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) held its
annual meeting 3-14 march 2003. For
the first time ICTs and Gender was put on the Agenda. The topic chosen was
“Participation and access of women to the media, and information and
communication technologies and their impact on and use as an instrument for the
advancement and empowerment of women”.
In choosing this topic for consideration at its
forty-seventh session, the Commission intended to provide an input to the World
Summit on the Information Society. The commission emphasized the importance of
focusing on the gender dimension of information and communication technologies
to prevent and combat an adverse impact of the digital revolution on gender
equality.
The work of the Commission was based on a report of the
Secretary-General, and was facilitated by a panel discussion (report and
moderators summary available on : http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/47sess.html
Participants of the panel discussion noted that the
emergence of ICTs and the profound
changes in global media and communication system posed opportunities and
challenges for the promotion of gender equality. They emphasized the role of ICT
and the media as tools for development and as central to the empowerment of
women. These new medias and ICT were increasingly used to share knowledge,
enhance participation of all members of society, increase networking, give voice
to marginalized groups, organize political action, empower people, fight poverty
and enhance economic development. It was therefore particularly important to
address gender-based discrimination and inequalities that undermined women’s
access to opportunities in the emerging knowledge and information society.
A human rights approach framed the debate as participants
placed emphasis on women’s rights in the information society, with enhanced
opportunities for democratic governance, the exercise of citizenship and full
participation in development for all, based on the right to information and
communication. Participants also made reference to the call in the UN Millennium
Declaration that ICT become available to all. As these technologies were seen as
tools for the achievement of all the millennium development goals, their gender
perspectives had to be addressed in their use.
The role of ICT was underlined as a crucial opportunity
for enhancing attention to gender perspectives in the ongoing preparations for
the WSIS and for ensuring that gender equality was at the center of global
discussions on the future of the information society. While the draft
declaration that had emanated from PrepCom 2 paid some attention to gender
perspectives and the priorities and needs of women, participants were very
concerned about the absence of relevant actions from the draft plan of action.
It would therefore be especially important for participants in the Commission to
work with their national delegations to the Summit to strengthen attention to
gender perspectives in the process and the outcome documents. Steps were also
needed to increase the number of women, as well as of gender experts, in
governmental, business and civil society delegations in all activities to the
Summit and its preparations.
The Commissions agreed conclusions, as well as relevant
reports before the Commission, would be important instruments in ensuring the
success of those efforts.
The agreed conclusions from the CSW were submitted to the
President of the WSIS preparatory Committee. In order to ensure that girls and
women benefit from the information age the Commission adopted the following
recommendations:
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Creation of
a gender sensitive enabling environment and integration of gender
perspectives in the development and implementation of national policies
and strategies in the area of information and communication technologies
and media and communication policies.
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Promotion of
women’s participation and employment in the information society.
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Mobilization
of resources to promote gender equality in the media and in the
information and communication technologies.
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Inclusiveness
and participation in the promotion of gender equality in the information
society.
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World Summit
on the Information Society.
All participants and in particular the decision makers
involved are urged to :
- Include gender perspective in every facet of the
Summit
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Ensure active participation of
gender equality advocates in the preparatory process and the Summit
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Include women as leaders and
decision makers in all Summit planning process
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Facilitate and encourage the
participation of women as members of national delegations by setting
targets for delegations to include at least 30 percent
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Implement an information
dissemination campaign that includes a wide range of media on ICT as a
tool for the empowerment of women.
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