I. Global and Regional Policy Dialogue

APDIP worked towards raising the issues pertaining to gender rights and mainstreaming challenges via regional and global Pre-World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) events. Several key stakeholders were addressed, namely policy makers, development agencies and civil soeciety organizations, and the media.

For example, the Gender Perspectives on the Information Society - South Asia Pre-WSIS Seminar and Mapping Gender in the Information Society: From Reality to Discourse prominently raised awareness of more than 100 civil society organizations from the region via regional policy dialogue and strategies focused on mainstreaming gender perspectives in national, regional and global ICT policies and initiatives.

Awareness and responsibility of the role of the media on gender issues was also strengthened via interventions at the Asia Media Summit. Parallel workshops organized resulted in a set of recommendations that were accepted and included into the official Asia Media Summit Declaration and was submitted as an official input to WSIS and was endorsed by 400 delegates from 65 countries and 187 organizations. Credible and strong partnerships were forged with UNIFEM and UNDP’s Asia Pacific Gender Mainstreaming Programme.

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II. Awareness and Advocacy

It has been observed that focus of development agencies have been primarily concentrated on advocating the rationale and success of ICT for gender pilot projects without adequate emphasis on the policy dimension. APDIP undertook a two-prong approach in addressing the agenda. Firstly, APDIP worked towards strengthening advocacy and awareness through developing in-depth knowledge products highlighting specific regional viewpoints on the issues and challenges on ICT and gender and gender mainstreaming.

• e-Primer on Gender and ICT [PDF, 1.0MB] [Wikibook]
• Gender in the Information Society: Emerging issues [PDF, 990kB]
• Video on Gender Perspectives on the Information Society [WMV, 15.1MB]

Secondly, a concerted effort has been made to ensure issues relating to specific gender mainstreaming in regional policies were produced and targeted to government policy makers in the region. For example, APDIP, in partnership with selected relevant CSOs from the region, has partnered on developing a dedicated publication on issues related to policy development and ICT and gender mainstreaming.

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III. Project Design

All of APDIP’s projects undertake a gender perspective at the design stage, to ensure equity in stake, participation and ownership. This important criteria is enshrined as one of the key objectives in all project designs. For example, in the training centres established in Afghanistan, the project proposal clearly outlined that one of the key objectives and outcome in the initiative was to ‘reduce social exclusion and increase gender equity by providing avenues for the integration of women in Afghan society and economy and, towards this end,  the project developed a training centre in collaboration with the Ministry of Women’s Affairs for the exclusive use of women.

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IV. Gender Related Research and Pilot Projects

Via the Pan Asia Research and Development Grants Programme, APDIP supported and promoted research and development of five pilot ICT for gender projects involving testing, experimentation, networking and innovation.

• Education: ICT-Enabled Life Skill and Sexuality Education for Adolescent Girls 
• Content and Advocacy: A Web-Based Information System to Address Gender Concerns 
• Capacity Building: ICT-Enabled Women's Social Net in India 
• Health: IT-Mediated Rural Women Education and Dissemination of Health Information 
• Economic Empowerment: ICT-Assisted Economic Empowerment - Integrated Tools Development

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Resources

e-Primer on Gender and ICT

This e-primer looks at ICT for development through gender lens, provides a gender perspectives to issues of ICT policies; access and control; education, training and skill development; and content development, and introduces a framework to integrate gender in ICT for development and empower women.

This e-primer is part of a series of e-Primers for the Information Economy, Society and Polity.

Publication on Gender in the Information Society: Emerging issues

This publication is a collection of 13 papers developed for a pre-World Summit on the Information Society seminar, developed in partnership with UNIFEM and IT for Change. It showcases perspectives that critique the engagement with new technologies in various development sectors such as governance, media and work. An edited video of the seminar was also produced.

This publication is part of APDIP's ICT4D Series.

Video on Gender Perspectives on the Information Society

The video provides snapshots of the critical issues discussed at the Gender Perspectives on the Information Society: South Asia Pre-WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) Seminar. This seminar took place in Bangalore on 18-19 April 2005. It was organized by IT for Change in partnership with Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era and Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, with support from APDIP and UNIFEM.

This video was screened at the WSIS Gender Caucus Conference and the Heinrich Boell Foundation in September 2005, and at WSIS in Tunis from 16-18 November 2005. [WMV, 15.1MB]

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Other Resources

Click here for other useful resources on Gender and ICT

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News and Events

Click here for news and events related to Gender and ICT

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