[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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