Because I am a girl: Digital and urban frontiers 2010

The report focuses on the lives of adolescents in two of the current scenarios of faster growth: the urban environment and the digital world. Both have new opportunities for girls and young women but also risks that have hardly been investigated and regulated. Prejudice and poverty exclude millions of girls from taking advantages of the transformative possibilities that cities and information and ICTs can offer. The 2010 'Because I am a Girl' brings lots of exciting examples from around the world that ICTs open up for girls in terms of learning, networking, campaigning and personal development, such as girls tweeting to amplify their voices in global discussions on women’s rights. The report has also interesting and context specific recommendations on how to enhance girls access to science and technology.
In particular, the Chapter 4 of the report highlights the positive and negative consequences of ICTs, in particular mobile phones and the internet, including statistics on the digital revolution and the digital divide, key reasons why ICTs are important to adolescent girls, gender disparities of girls and boys use of digital technologies, or the online risks that girls are exposed to at a time of their lives when they are beginning to develop sexually. The authors also speaks about 7 main barriers that prevent adolescent girls to access ICTs - discrimination, numbers, confidence, language, time, money and freedom.
To get a taste of what other issues are covered in the report, read the summary on ICTworks.org: http://bit.ly/htgVD8