The emergent information or network society context offers a range of opportunities for women and girls to enhance their participation across economic, socio-cultural and public-political realms of life, as well as the scope for enhancing their individual freedoms. The Post-2015 agenda therefore, both in terms of goals and related targets and indicators, has to promote and measure women’s participation in the information society and their access to and effective use of the internet and ICTs. This paper recommends that the question of gender and ICTs must be addressed in the post-2015 global development agenda, in the following manner:
1.There should be a specific goal related to the meaningful and effective use of ICTs and the internet, that is measured through gender sensitive targets and indicators. This should take into account the quality of access, and not just availability.
2.There should be a specific goal related to gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment that takes into account access to and effective use of ICTs and the internet as a target (with appropriate indicators) within the goal. The larger goal of women’s empowerment in the contemporary information society cannot be dis-embedded from the context that ICTs are creating.
3. To facilitate a nuanced assessment, the indicators that are evolved under the above-mentioned goals must capture the individual-household, public-institutional and community-social aspects of access to, and use of, ICTs and the internet.
The paper also highlights the areas that global and national policy and programmatic frameworks need to address, in order to promote the gender equality agenda in the information society context:
a) Promotion of access and effective use of the internet and ICTs
b) Creation of opportunity structures for women and
c) Building equitable techno-architectures.
Download the full paper here
1.There should be a specific goal related to the meaningful and effective use of ICTs and the internet, that is measured through gender sensitive targets and indicators. This should take into account the quality of access, and not just availability.
2.There should be a specific goal related to gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment that takes into account access to and effective use of ICTs and the internet as a target (with appropriate indicators) within the goal. The larger goal of women’s empowerment in the contemporary information society cannot be dis-embedded from the context that ICTs are creating.
3. To facilitate a nuanced assessment, the indicators that are evolved under the above-mentioned goals must capture the individual-household, public-institutional and community-social aspects of access to, and use of, ICTs and the internet.
The paper also highlights the areas that global and national policy and programmatic frameworks need to address, in order to promote the gender equality agenda in the information society context:
a) Promotion of access and effective use of the internet and ICTs
b) Creation of opportunity structures for women and
c) Building equitable techno-architectures.
Download the full paper here
Year of publication
2015
- 2951 views
Add new comment