Seeing ICT through a gender lens
By Mercy Wambui, Communication Officer, ECA
17 January 2005

"The gender movement in Africa needs to do a lot more to sensitize policy-makers on mainstreaming ICTs in national policy". This was the main message to participants concluding a 5-day workshop in Addis Ababa on "Strengthening the capacity of national machineries through the effective use of ICTs."

Aida Opoku-Mensah, of the Economic Commission for Africa called on gender activists and institutions working on empowerment issues to have a more concerted strategy for prioritizing ICTs in the national development agenda: "There is a need for gender-aware approaches to policies in sectors such as e-commerce and e-government frameworks to support the needs of those in the informal sector, who are often women."

Held from 10 to 14 January 2005, the main aim of the workshop was to build the institutional capacity of information managers working for National Machineries for the Empowerment of Women to support gender equality and gender mainstreaming in the development frameworks of member States as outlined in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The workshop was organized by the UN Division for the Advancement of women (DAW) in collaboration with ECA's Development Information Services Division (DISD) and the African Centre for Gender and Development (ACGD).

"So far, the participants have gone through quite a bit of ICT sensitization throughout the training process," said technical consultant Jenny Radloff, referring to previous workshops held by UNDAW for National Machineries in other Anglophone and Francophone African countries.

"The combination of technical hands-on training in mailing lists and websites and the training on gender issues in the context of ICT policy makes the training exercise more complete and will help the Machineries to strengthen their national and regional networks and participation in ICT policy formulation and implementation processes," said Radloff.

Ms. Roselyn Odera, head of Gender Analysis in the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), said that the outcomes of the meeting would contribute to the preparations for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) whose second phase will be held in Tunis later in the year, with a view to ensuring attention to gender perspectives and a focus on gender equality in Africa's emerging Information Society.

Commenting on a presentation by DISD's Scan-ICT project which aims to assess the impact of ICTs in society and in development, she said: "National Machineries have a key role to play to ensure that gender perspectives are taken into account in such analysis."

Eight English-speaking member States - Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Uganda were represented.

For more information on the workshop, please contact DISD's Atsuko Okuda aokuda@uneca.org or Sharon J. Taylor, Gender Analysis Section Division for the Advancement of Women, e-mail: taylors@un.org