Transcript Application of ICT in Mainstreaming of Gender in The Global Market And

Application of ICT in
Mainstreaming of Gender in
The Global Market And
Women Entrepreneurship
Promotion
Introduction
“The emergence of electronic commerce
over the past decade has radically
transformed the economic landscape. For
developing countries, the digital revolution
offers unprecedented opportunities for
economic growth and development, as
entrepreneurs
from
Bangalore
to
Guadalajara to Dakar can testify.”
Kofi A. Annan
Introduction
Information
and
Communication
Technologies (ICT) are not only a
significant factor in the performance and
growth of economies - the importance of
which is continuously growing -,but they
also represent a novel and effective tool to
help
advance
sustainable
human
development (SHD).
Introduction
The Buenos Aires Declaration on Global
Telecommunication Development for the
Twenty-first
Century
stated
that
telecommunications are an essential
component of political, economic, social,
and cultural development and the basis of
the global information society
Introduction
ICTs allow faster delivery and a more adapted
content of technical assistance in a variety of
sectors - ranging from long-distance
education,
telemedicine,
environmental
management to strengthening of participatory
approaches and the creation of new
livelihoods.
Introduction
ICTs allow access to information sources
worldwide, promote networking transcending
borders, languages and cultures, foster
empowerment of communities, women, youth
and socially disadvantaged groups, and help
spread knowledge about "best practices" and
experience.
ICTs are indispensable to realize the global
information society and the global knowledge
society.
Introduction
Women are a vulnerable group throughout the
world, and are targeted e-international and
national efforts to improve their status. Lack of
knowledge is the main reason why women are
considered a vulnerable group.
Having ICT-literate women who use it to
advance in their careers is important to help
them keep up with the global trends and live up
to the international standards.
Factors hindering women access
to ICT
A series of factors, including literacy and
education,
language,
time,
cost,
geographical location of facilities, social
and cultural norms, and women's
computer and information search and
dissemination skills constrain women's
access to information technology.
Factors hindering women access
to ICT
Science and technology education.
Women’s access to resources is
limited due to biases resulting from the
family arbitration system.
Lack
of
women’s
grassroots
organizations
prevents
their
participation in development activities.
Factors hindering women access
to ICT
Constraints to the preparation and
implementation
of
appropriate
development plans.
Lack of regional gender-desegregated
data.
Absence of women’s groups because of
cultural taboos.
Weak collaboration with non-governmental
or private entities.
Objectives of ICT
Applications
Mainstreaming of gender in
global market.
Economic empowerment of
women.
Women entrepreneurship
promotion.
Mainstreaming of
gender in global market
Access to labor market:
–According to the ILO World
Employment Report 2001, the
greatest potential for job creation
globally is within the core IT sector.
Economic Violence Against
Women
Definition:
– Economic violence against women is
the suffering of women from poverty,
deprivation of Job opportunities & her
capability to increase her income & her
standard of living.
Economic Violence Against
Women
The unemployment of females in Egypt is
21% against 5% in Males.
27% of the men headed families are below
the line of poverty while on the other hand
45% of the women headed house hold are
below the line of poverty.
The average wages for males is 54 L.E.
compared to that of females 37 L.E. which
is 69% of the wages of the males.
Economic Violence Against
Women
Although there is equal pay for the same
job & the labor law does not discriminate
in salaries between males or females in
the same job.
Women have access to only 12% of the
microloans.
Women own only 3% of the cultivated
land.
Factors contributing to
Economic Violence against
women
Education:
– The tradition & culture concentrates on the education of males
as the main supporter of the family with negligence to women’s
education increasing her dependency on the male partner.
Training:
– She has less chance to improve her talents & hence qualify for
prestigious jobs requiring certain skills & I.T technology. Thus
women contribute 22% of the labor market in the lowest
occupational ladder with medium wages as their training
opportunities are much less than the male opportunities.
Economic Awareness & Women Entrepreneurship:
– The promotion of women Entrepreneurship is closely linked with
their economic awareness & their ability to establish their own
enterprises though formal equality exists in the constitution.
Empowerment through
employment of women
ICT makes the role of time and distance
less significant in organising business and
production related activities.
Women therefore can work from anywhere
and at anytime and raise that extra income
to become more financially independent
and empowered.
Empowerment through
employment of women
Recently, companies like Ford and General
Electrics have moved their back-end operations
to Asia and employ a large number of women
workers having basic information technology
and data management skills.
New areas of employment such as telemarketing, medical transcription etc. have also
opened up tremendous job opportunities for
women. These jobs are definitely under-paid and
fall at the lower segment of ICT jobs;
nevertheless, they are opening up avenues
where none existed before.
Entrepreneurship Promotion
Definition of An entrepreneur:
– An entrepreneur is essentially a person who is
not only self-employed but generates
employment and income for others through a
combination of efforts requiring zeal and
capability to transform physical, financial,
natural and human resources for production
possibilities to extract the business potential
within any situation.
Entrepreneurship Promotion
Entrepreneurs should be able to produce
innovative goods and services to suit to the
market demand as well as earn a profit. Besides
the above qualities, women entrepreneurs need
to have additional quality in terms of
determination and tenacity and additional skills
in terms to access to ICT to cope with adverse
situations, which seem to confront the female
entrepreneurs more than their male counterparts
in a given situation.
Promotion of Women’s
Entrepreneurship
It is a means to alleviate women’s
unemployment and poverty and also
stimulate economic growth.
Women’s entrepreneurship promotion
aims at eliminating gender specific barriers
which limits women’s capacity to up
businesses. These include inadequate
access to information, business networks
as well as the traditional attitude towards
the gender role.
Entrepreneurship Promotion
Objectives
To contribute to the elaboration of
strategies and policies supporting women
in using their entrepreneurial potential.
To raise awareness among regional
decision-makers
concerning
the
importance
of
promoting
women’s
entrepreneurship.
To develop tools such as financing,
incubators and seminars for encouraging
potential women entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship Promotion
Objectives
To set up regional networks supporting
women’s entrepreneurship.
To develop training and education that
contributes
to
creating
an
entrepreneurship culture for women.
To contribute in the capacity building and
training of entrepreneur regarding ICT.
E-commerce and Women
Entrepreneurship Promotion
E-commerce Definition:
–Any use of information and
communications technology by a
business that helps to improve its
interactions with customers or
suppliers.
The definition encompasses both domestic and
international business. SME’s may find
beneficial ways to use e-commerce to enhance
relationships with their domestic customers and
suppliers as well as internationally.
Creating class of women
entrepreneurs
One of the most powerful applications of ICT in
the domain of knowledge networking is
electronic commerce. Electronic commerce
refers not just to selling of products and services
online but to the promotion of a new class of
ICT-savvy women entrepreneurs in both rural
and urban areas.
Women over time have learnt the advantages
offered by ICT and its potential in opening up
windows to the outside world. This has put them
in a greater control over the activities performed
by
themlaying
the
foundation
for
Potential Gains from eCommerce
Find new customers – and partners and
suppliers
–
domestically
and
internationally
Serve current and new customers better,
hence offering more value to them
Improve the efficiency of their business
processes
Offer entirely new services and products –
even start entirely new businesses.
Marketing
Marketing is always an
obstacle
facing
women
entrepreneurship.
ICT
is
crucial for marketing of
products.
Marketing Agreement
An agreement was done between Egyptian
Federation of Business and Professional
Women (BPW-Egypt), and the International
Federation of Business and Professional
Women (BPWI) to market BPW-Egypt women
products via their website which is accessible to
50000 members in 100 countries.
Main Obstacle:
– All the products to marketed are still not promoted
using ICT tools, even just a CD catalogue as a
marketing tool never existed.
ICT Benefit For Women Owners Of
SMEs
E-commerce may offer them comparatively more
advantages to find new customers and suppliers
especially in markets they have not easily been
able to reach before – either internationally or
regionally.
Access to Information:
– The most valuable application is information
accessing to facilitate their business and generating
and disseminating information about it. Women
entrepreneurs globally have said that access to
information, especially market information, is their first
priority in accelerating the growth of their
businesses5.
Role of Partners of
Development in
Promoting Gender
Equity in Using IT
Partners of Development
Building Partnerships:
–
–
–
–
It is necessary to involve strategic stakeholders
from both the public and the private sectors.
These could include the government bodies,
corporate firms, financial institutions and the NGOs.
Fostering corporate partnership in ICT ventures and
raising of venture capital fund for social
development projects becomes an important line of
thought.
This could be done through a plethora of ways such
as ICT based advertisement, using existing
corporate infrastructure for opening of telecentres,
bringing about transfer of technical expertise from
corporate to the development sector.
Partners of Development
Governments.
Civil Society.
Private Sector.
Partners of Development
Governments:
– Education.
– IT Policy.
– Telecommunication Infrastructure.
A- Governments
Education:
– Girls and women must acquire literacy and
basic education to be able to fully utilize new
technology.
– Information technologies could be integrated
into girls' education and women's literacy
programs to expose girls to new technologies
at early stages and allow for much needed
integration of these two program areas.
A- Governments
IT Policy:
– IT policy must take gender into account to provide an
enabling environment for women, and gender policy
must take account of the opportunities that IT can
bring.
Telecommunication Infrastructure:
– The country must have good telecommunications
infrastructure and an enabling environment that will
attract jobs that women can fill. Requirements for
teleworking are computer literate workers, reliable
power supply, and adequate communication
infrastructure5.
B- Civil Society
NGOs contribute to the empowerment of
women and development of human resource
through:
– Training.
– Capacity Building.
– Technical Assistance and Support Services.
– Advocacy.
– Project Development.
– Networking.
B- Civil Society
Training:
– Women outside the formal schooling system
and already in the workforce need access to
technology training to retrain and upgrade
skills as well as to acquire new ones. Such
improvement requires interventions at all
levels of education.
B- Civil Society
Capacity Building:
– Empowerment of women in the context of knowledge
societies is understood as building the ability and
skills of women to gain insight of actions and issues in
the external environment which influence them, and
to build their capacity to get involved and voice their
concerns in these external processes, and make
informed decisions.
– It entails building up of capacities of women to
overcome social and institutional barriers, and
strengthening their participation in the economic and
political processes for an overall improvement in their
quality of lives.
B- Civil Society
Technical Assistance and Support services:
– Human resource development for system support: To
ensure the presence of girls and women among the
technologically trained, campaigns could be
developed to attract and retain women professionals.
Advocacy:
– Strengthening institutional capacity to integrate
gender considerations in policies and programs and
supporting women's equitable access to training is
required to ensure that telecommunications address
women's needs and concerns more effectively.
B- Civil Society
Project Development:
– Effective partnerships with NGOs which extend
beyond disaster relief and mitigation to include a
range of project development, implementation and
delivery systems can contribute to the effectiveness
and range of telecommunications systems.
– Many innovative activities and models for
telecommunications networks are being developed by
NGOs which contribute to improved consultation,
human resource development, and incorporating
gender equality considerations.
– Programs will have to be designed and put in place
that ensures women's access to the technologies that
can empower them in many aspects of their lives.
Civil Society
Networking:
– Networking is crucial to have access to the
global market.
– Affiliation to regional and international women
organizations.
Private Sector
Should mobilize its resources and
invest in the field of ICT.
Share the social responsibility of
the capital in funding training
programs for the uses of ICT for
women Entrepreneurship.
Conclusion
Access to the global market:
– Information and communication technologies
have enormous potential to link remote
communities to global markets, to make
telemedicine and telework available to
communities in need, to democratize
decision-making, to support distance learning.
But if the global community and national
policy makers are not proactive about
ensuring that the benefits of IT are equally
available to and shaped by women and men,
we will fail to reap the full potential of these
powerful tools.
Conclusion
ICT is a way to alleviate poverty and
contribute to the solution of elimination of
economic violence against women and
hindering women access to the labor
market.
Without full participation in the use of
information technology, women are left
without the key to participation in the
global world of the twenty-first century.
Recommendations
A brain-storming meeting was held in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, 21-23 November 2003, for the
building of the African Union in 21st century.
It recommended to encourage member states to
promote investments in ICT to enhance the
development of the African private sector.
A project was submitted to the African Union for
economic women empowerment through ICT.
Recommendations
During the 2nd Pan AfroArab Congress of
Business and Professional Women held in
Cairo, April, 2003, it was recommended to
establish an E-Catalogue gathering the
products and services of women
entrepreneurs in the Arab World and Africa
to achieve economic integration in the
region and open international markets
which acts as a marketing tool to empower
women economically.
Recommendations
Concentrate on the export of
services and products using
ICT.
Establishment of a Databank
for Business women, experts,
industries, products, etc…….
Recommendations
Partners of Development should:
– Put a plan of action for increasing of ICT awareness
among women and organizing training courses for
capacity building.
– Raise awareness, build vision and advise on policies
to capture information and knowledge for
development.
– Promote and build connectivity and necessary
infrastructure for access to information and
development.
– Build required human and social capacities and
institutions and provide training and education to
impart requisite skills.
Recommendations
Leverage partnerships with the private
sector (they have the know-how), business
associations,
teaching
institutions,
technical
schools
or
any
other
associations of SME’s.
Meet with and work with women’s
professional associations – or other
organizations with women business
owners as members.
Recommendations
Provide support to several innovative
approaches to e-readiness training by
different organizations and then facilitate
the replication of the successful ones in
other areas.
Conduct pilot projects to demonstrate the
feasibility, suitability and impact of ICTs for
sustainable human development (SHD)
through electronic community centres.