[huridocs-tech] WSIS: Women, Media and ICTs at UN Commission on the Status of Women

IWTC WOMEN'S GLOBALNET #225
Initiatives and Activities of Women Worldwide
By Anne S. Walker

March 12, 2003

WOMEN, MEDIA AND ICTS: UN/CSW DELEGATES DEFER DELIBERATION ON CONTENTIOUS 
POINTS

This issue of IWTC Women's GlobalNet features a guest journalist from
Isis  International/Manila. Mavic Cabrera-Balleza is here in New York as
part of a team of gender and media advocates who have come to
participate in the 47th Session of the CSW. Mavic and Muthoni Wanyeki of
FemNet/Kenya  have come directly from the AMARC seminar in Kathmandu,
Nepal that focused on community radio. Others of us came straight from
the World Summit on the information Society (WSIS) PrepCom 2 in Geneva.

Many of the documents and other materials prepared for WSIS and the CSW
are now available online at <http://www.genderIT.org>. There you will
find a PowerPoint presentation that you can download and use as needed.
It introduces the efforts being made to get gender equity concerns and
issues on the WSIS agenda. Also available is a 16-page newsletter "Women
and WSIS" that shows the linkages between what is being fought for in
the WSIS preparatory process and the Beijing Platform for Action 12
critical areas of concern.

Onsite Report from the 47th UN CSW session
by Mavic Cabrera-Balleza,, Isis International/Manila

New York: 11 March 2003. The Bureau of the Commission on the Status of
Women (CSW) finished the second reading of the draft of the "Agreed
Conclusions on the theme media and information and communication
technologies (ICTs)" today. The Commission recalled and reiterated the
strategic objectives and actions of the Beijing Platform for Action, the
outcome document of the Fourth World Conference on Women 1995, on the
potential of the media and of ICT to contribute to the advancement of
empowerment of women. It also recalled the provision in the UN
Millennium Declaration (2000) on the need to ensure that the benefits of
the new ICTs are available to all.

One of the points that the Bureau agreed on is the need to focus on the
gender dimensions of ICTs to prevent and combat any adverse impact of
the digital revolution on achieving gender equality. Another point
agreed upon is the need to integrate gender perspectives in the
forthcoming World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). However, the
delegates failed to come to an agreement on the call for the inclusion
of at least 30 percent women in national, civil society and private
sector delegations to WSIS. The representative from the USA objected to
the 30 percent quota in the composition of the delegations saying that
this number is arbitrary.

The Commission did agree on the provision of management, negotiation,
and leadership training for women, as well as mentoring systems and
other support strategies and programmes to enhance women's capabilities
and potential for advancement in media and ICT sectors. Another point of
agreement was the need to compile statistics on ICT use, disaggregated
by sex and age, to develop gender-specific indicators on ICT use and to
collect gender-specific data on employment and education patterns in
media and ICT professions. Similarly, the Commission agreed on the need
to enable equal access for women to ICT-based economic activities such
as small business and home-based employment.

The following action points, regarded as the more contentious ones, are
to be discussed on 13 and 14 March, the last two days of the 47th
session of the CSW:

-Ensure that policy and legislation empowers regulatory bodies to
establish appropriate mechanisms to enhance full participation of women
in ownership, control, and management of ICT and media;

-Use and establish legal and regulatory means and provide financial and
other support that enable public and community media to work in support
of gender equality;

-Encourage South-South cooperation to facilitate transfer and exchange
of low-cost technologies and appropriate content between developing
countries;

-Strengthen and encourage the use of existing information and
communication technologies such as radio, TV, as well as
telecommunications and print, in parallel to enhancing the use of the
new technologies for gender equality and the economic and political and
social empowerment of women as leaders,
participants and consumers; and

-Enhance international cooperation to create an enabling environment to
reduce the digital information divide between developed and developing
countries and promote, develop and enhance access to ICT including the
internet infrastructure, particularly for women.

In relation to the last point, the Canadian delegation proposed the
following formulation:

-facilitate access to and transfer of knowledge and technology on
concessional, preferential, and favourable terms to the developing
countries, as mutually agreed, taking into account the need to protect
intellectual property rights and the special needs of developing
countries.

Other than the proposal from Canada, the current draft of the "Agreed
Conclusions" does not discuss the issue of intellectual property rights,
a hotly debated issue in the WSIS process. In addition, there is no
mention of open source, i.e. computer software that is non-proprietary
and available for anyone to adapt and change, nor any mention of network
security in the draft.

Check out the website set up by the NGO Gender Strategies Working Group
for further information concerning the lobbying efforts of gender, media
and ICT advocates at the CSW and the WSIS. Website:
<http://www.genderIT.org>

Official UN/CSW documents can be found at:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/47sess.htm

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