Gender and ICT policy making
" 'ICTs have enormous potential to benefit girls and women in terms of enhanced income-generation opportunities, employment, and improved quality of life, but because technologies are not gender neutral, it is important to advocate for ICT strategies to reduce and manage the potential for ICTs to create economic and social exclusion and reinforce existing social disparities.' -- Gender activist, Gillian Marcelle, in her chapter, 'Getting Gender into African ICT Policy: A Strategic View' which appears in the book 'Gender and the Information Revolution in Africa' (IDRC, 2000)."
Marcelle believes that the inclusion of the gender dimension into national ICT policies has been the missing element in ICT policy formulation in the past. She has developed a set of recommendations for key actors involved in the process of policy formulation and implementation that determines the points at which gender issues can be inserted into the policy debate.
African civil society is identified as a key actor in the section, 'Recommendations for key actors in ICT policy formulation and implementation'. She notes that this is the sector that has a major role to play in setting the agenda for policy development.
Marcelle notes that the first step in bringing about the desired changes would be to define an agenda of interventions that African women and their allies can use to make a gender-balanced information society a reality in Africa. She presents an agenda for this transformation, organising key actions as follows:
* Focussed public-policy intervention;
* Allocate ICT development resources to women;
* Provide and improve telecommunications infrastructure;
* Build technological capability (the human-resource component);
* Facilitate and encourage the involvement of women in technological innovation;
* Create culturally resonant content;
* Design and deliver appropriate training mechanisms;
* and Increase effective demand for ICT products and services.
Access this chapter and other interesting African gender policy resources at: http://africa.rights.apc.org/resources.shtml?-1-Gender
[source: CHAKULA Issue No. 2, September 2002 :: *Newsletter of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC)Africa Internet Rights ICT Policy Monitor to mobilise African Civil Society for ICT policy for development and social justice*]