[It-women] Amplifying Women’s Voices in Technology Policy
Yacine Khelladi
yacine at yacine.net
Wed Aug 16 10:32:36 BRT 2017
World Wide Web Foundation
World Wide Web Foundation <http://webfoundation.org>
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Amplifying Women’s Voices in Technology Policy
<http://webfoundation.org/2017/08/amplifying-womens-voices-in-technology-policy/>
Posted: 11 Aug 2017 01:21 PM PDT
The world is at the beginning of a connectivity revolution that is rapidly
turning internet access into a critical determinant of individuals’ human and
social capital and earning power. As the inventor of the web and Web Foundation
founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee put it
<http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2014/03/web-at-25/tim-berners-lee>:
“The web is vital to democracy, [and] a public resource on which people,
businesses, communities and governments depend.”
Despite the importance of achieving all of the internet, for all of the people,
all of the time
<http://webfoundation.org/2015/04/all-of-the-people-all-of-the-internet-all-of-the-time/>,
research shows that women are far less likely to benefit from the empowering
potential of the web — if they are connected at all. Despite what appears to be
growing public attention around this issue, recent research from the ITU shows
that the global gender gap in internet access has actually worsened in recent
years, widening from 11% in 2013 to 12% in 2016
<http://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/2016-PR30.aspx>.
Our Women’s Rights Online (WRO) household survey research
<http://webfoundation.org/docs/2015/10/womens-rights-online21102015.pdf>zoomed
in on urban poor communities to find out more about the digital gender divide.
Even in cities that are often praised for their digital development and ICT
innovation, poor women are 50% less likely
<http://webfoundation.org/docs/2015/10/womens-rights-online21102015.pdf>than men
to have access to the internet, and 30-50% less likely
<http://webfoundation.org/about/research/womens-rights-online-2015/>than men to
use the internet to increase their income or participate in public life.
Ignoring the ICT gender gap now will entrench inequalities, and will make
progress toward reversing inequality painfully slow — with massive economic and
social costs. The good news is that governments can avoid this scenario by
putting gender front and centre of their ICT policy agendas, now.
Our WRO network partners are supporting stakeholders to do just that — working
to drive policy change that prioritises gender and moves the needle towards full
digital inclusion and gender equality both online and offline. The member
organisations of the WRO network are working across 15+ low- and middle-income
countries to highlight research and to support both grassroots and high-level
advocacy efforts centred around the need for governments to REACT — focusing on
*r*ights, *e*ducation, *a*ccess, *c*ontent and gender equality *t*argets.
Check out this snapshot <https://webfoundation.org/wro-network-orgs/>of the
fantastic Women’s Rights Online projects underway around the world.
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