women and ICT

The promotion of micro and small-scale enterprises (MSEs) has been recognized as an important strategy for advancing the economic empowerment of women while reducing poverty and gender inequality. Women entrepreneurs are offered new opportunities by ICTs to start and grow businesses. Through new as well as traditional forms of ICTs, women entrepreneurs are reaching out to customers, becoming more efficient and building businesses in ways they could not do before.

Mobile financial services (MFS) are emerging rapidly in the developing world, with over 150 mobile money deployments live and over 110 more planned worldwide at present. Markets such as Tanzania, Bangladesh and Pakistan are realizing success and are potentially able to replicate the widespread adoption of Safaricom’s M-PESA service in Kenya. Others are still works-in-progress, finding mass adoption and scale elusive.

This case study examines the information channels and use of ICTs by men and women farmers around Nakuru and Thika in Kenya. It contributes to a growing body of literature that aims to understand how ICTs can close gender gaps in agriculture and lead to more equitable opportunities for farmers.

The Cherie Blair Foundation and GSMA Development Fund published a ground-breaking report in February 2010, quantifying the gender gap in mobile technology across developing countries – Women & Mobile: A Global Opportunity. The report shows that, by extending the benefits of mobile phone ownership to more women, a host of social and economic goals can be advanced, but 300 million women are missing out on the mobile revolution. This translates to a $13bn revenue opportunity for mobile operators.

This handbook is part of a portfolio of tools available to help mobile network operators and other members of the mobile ecosystem to improve their services for women in low- and middle-income countries. The handbook is an initiative of the GSMA mWomen Global Development Alliance, a program in partnership with USAID, AusAID, GSMA and Visa. GDA partner AusAID have supported the creation of this tool. It is one of a number of tools available to promote greater mobile access and usage by women in the developing world, including the Framework for Designing the mWomen Business Case.

The rapid global spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs), and particularly the proliferation of mobile Internet devices, is redefining not only the realms of information and communication, but the very nature of social structures and institutions. This brief argues that the global ‘information society’ or ‘network society’ is not gender neutral – it has different implications for women and men, girls and boys, and for the relationships between them.

Although access to the Internet is spreading rapidly in developing countries, women are nearly 25 percent less likely than men to be online. This gender gap—which today prevents a staggering 200 million women from participating online—is projected to perpetuate. A dedicated and coordinated effort by public and private sector actors is urgently needed to accelerate the pace of progress in bridging this gap. Without any concerted action, 450 million new female Internet users are projected to come online in the next three years, simply as a result of organic growth in Internet penetration.

The primary purpose of this report is to describe the process of creating and disseminating an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) training curriculum that serves information and economic interests of women entrepreneurs in three Latin American countries: Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador. The overarching goal of the training is to provide accessible and regionally appropriate content that teaches women how to effectively harness the power of the information economy and to leverage e-business strategies to improve their socioeconomic statuses.

Efficient public service delivery and institutional capacity building take central role in development strategies. Recently, the adoption of ICT in the public sector – particularly through the e-Government Services – has become a policy priority for many governments in both developed and developing countries. E-Services starts to play a significant role in development since they can accelerate public service delivery, improve government accountability, encourage civil participation in decision making processes, and many more.

This session introduces UN-ESCAP's gender equality policy and present findings of its study on enabling entrepreneurship for women's economic empowerment.