Proposer's Name: Ms. Amrita Choudhury
Proposer's Organization: CCAOI
Co-Proposer's Name: Ms. Nadira Al-Araj
Co-Proposer's Organization: ISOC Palestine
Co-Organizers:
Ms Maritza Aguero Minano, Academia, AUI Peru / LACRALO Secretariat
Ms Evelyn Namara, Private Sector, Techpreneur Uganda
Ms Nooria Ahmadi, Technical Community, AfIGF, Afghanistan
Ms Sylvia Kanari, Civil Society, Hivos, Kenya
Session Format: Birds of a Feather - 60 Min
Proposer:
Country: India
Stakeholder Group: Civil Society
Co-Proposer:
Country: Palestinian Territory
Stakeholder Group: Technical Community
Speaker: NADIRA AL-ARAJ
Speaker: Nooria Ahmadi
Speaker: Amrita Choudhury
Speaker: Maritza Aguero
Speaker: Evelyn Namara
Speaker: Sylvia Musalagani
Content of the Session:
Realizing the power of Internet being the greatest leveller, most countries of the Global South today, including India are digitizing all services and facilities.
However for benefits to percolate to the bottom of the pyramid, especially women, policies and social environment needs improvement so that women can freely access the internet, in their preferred language, watch content which they want, express themselves online without fear of being trolled, get equal opportunities in the technical fields and encouragement to become social entrepreneurs by generation of business and digital content.
The participants during this session, will share regional and national perspectives on the social, structural and policy challenges to enhance gender inclusiveness for a connected future, highlighting specific concerns and sharing the best practices and initiatives undertaken in their region by various stakeholders, for digitally empowering women, providing them meaningful access, entrepreneurial opportunities and encouraging women in technology.
The speakers will attempt to identify main global challenges related to gender rights, highlighting specific regional or national issues, share best practices adopted to overcome those challenges and highlight areas of public policy or social aspects that need to be addressed along with suggestions, in order to improve digital rights of women.
This would be an interactive session where participants would also be given time to share their perspectives.
Expected Outcome:
At the end of the session we expect participants to get an insight on the,
1. Existing challenges in creating a gender inclusive networked future
Identify the common challenges across Global South nations
Emphasize the unique regional or national challenges if any.
2. Best practices adopted by certain nations or regions to overcome the challenges
3. Areas which need reforms along with suggestions;
Policy related to improving gender rights
Social and Cultural development.
Duration: 60 mins
Tentative Session Schedule:
1. Introduction to the subject 5 mins
2. Outlining the Current Scenario and Challenges by Participants 15 min
3. Discussion on Regional and National Initiatives 10 mins
4. Suggested improvements 10 mins
5. Open Discussion 15 mins
6. Summarizing key take away from the session 5 mins
Relevance of the Session:
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report 2016[1] indicates that although average human development, improved significantly across all regions over the last fifteen years, one in three people worldwide still continue to live in low levels of human development. Systemic discrimination against women, indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, among other groups, are the barriers which are leaving them behind.
The ITU Report on ICT Facts and Figures 2016 indicates that the global Internet user gender gap has grown from 11% in 2013 to 12.2% in 2016 and developing nations such as Africa (23%) have a larger access gap than developed nations such as Americas (2%). They had further estimated that by the end of 2016, only one in seven people is expected to be online from Least Developing Nations (LDCs), of which, only 31% of them would be women.[2]
Existing gender disparities, discrimination and inequalities especially of people living in the Global South in developing and least developed countries, have severely impacted the gender digital divide. Therefore, a stronger focus on those excluded and on actions to dismantle these barriers is urgently needed to ensure sustainable human development for all.
Empowering women and other disadvantaged groups, providing them meaningful and affordable access, enabling and rendering a greater voice in decision-making processes, requires a more refined analysis of key data to inform actions such as assessing their participation and autonomy, focussing on the quality of development rather than quantity is the need of the hour.
To enable a networked future, it is important to create a multicultural internet, encouraging autonomy, potentializing the digital economy and valuing local content. All this is possible when women and other disadvantaged groups e empowered not only by meaningful and affordable access but ensuring them their rights and rendering their voice in decision-making processes.
It is therefore important in this digital age that women are not excluded and their rights are protected so that women can be empowered digitally and equipped to “Shape their own Future” which is the overarching theme of IGF 2017.
In this context , at the end of the session, we expect participants to get an insight on the,
1. Existing challenges in creating a gender inclusive networked future
Identify the common challenges across Global South nations
Emphasize the unique regional or national challenges if any.
2, Best practices adopted by certain nations or regions to overcome the challenges
3. Areas which need reforms along with suggestions;
Policy related to improving gender rights
Social and Cultural development.
Tag 1: Gender Issues
Tag 2: Access and Diversity
Tag 3: Digital Rights
Interventions:
Being a BoF session it would be an interactive session where participants would also be given time to share their perspectives.
Apart from the speakers who come from different stakeholder communities, continents and diverse backgrounds sharing their views and experiences on the subject.
The tentative session schedule would be as follows:
1. Introduction to the subject 5 mins
2. Outlining the Current Scenario and Challenges by Participants 15 min
3. Discussion on Regional and National Initiatives 10 mins
4. Suggested improvements 10 mins
5. Open Discussion 15 mins
6. Summarizing key take away from the session 5 mins
Diversity:
To ensure that the proposed session provides an overall unbiased and holistic view of the Global South with respect to "Redefining Rights for a Gender Inclusive Networked Future" , we have attempted to ensure diversity among the speakers.
1. To ensure relevance of discussion, we have ensured that all the speakers are from developing and LDC countries.
2. To ensure geographic diversity, the speakers belong to different continents , Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa, Central America, Latin America.
3. Speakers belong to diverse Stakeholder groups, namely Civil Society, Academia, Technical community, Business
4. Each speaker brings different perspectives, experiences and expertise, which is evident from their resumes.
5. Speakers from different age groups including 3 Youth to get different perspectives.
all this we believe will help to ensure the discussions are not tilted towards a particular stakeholder group, community or economy.
Onsite Moderator: Amrita Choudhury
Online Moderator: Renata Aquino Ribeiro
Rapporteur: Angélica Contreras, Youth Observatory, Mexico
Online Participation:
This workshop will rely on IGF support for remote participation and will also experiment with a variety of tools to bring in multiple views for the debate previously, during and after the presentation. Interactive document-building, intensive use of conversation in instantaneous social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Weibo can be completed by warm-up sessions to the workshop with short video messages.
Discussion facilitation:
The participants are expected to share regional and national perspectives on the social, structural and policy challenges to enhance gender inclusiveness for a connected future, highlighting specific concerns and sharing on the best practices and initiatives undertaken in their region by various stakeholders, to digitally empower women and those who are left out, providing them meaningful access, entrepreneurial opportunities and encouraging women in technology.
During the discussion the speakers would attempt to try and identify main global challenges related to gender rights, while highlighting specific regional or national issues, share best practices which nations or regions have adopted to overcome those challenges. Then they would attempt to share the areas of public policy or social aspects that need to be addressed along with suggestions, to improve the situation.
This would be an interactive session where participants would also be given time to share their perspectives.
Conducted a Workshop in IGF before?: Yes
Link to Report: https://www.i
