Session
Digital Divides & Inclusion
Gender Digital Divide
Organizer 1: Tunay Firat, UN Women
Speaker 1: Helene Molinier, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Speaker 2: Esther Mwema, Civil Society, African Group
Speaker 3: Tunay Firat, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Helene Molinier, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Tunay Firat, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Tunay Firat, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Debate - 60 Min
1. How to mainstream gender perspectives in national digital policies and remove the multidimensional and discriminatory barriers faced by women and girls
2. How to apply a human rights-based approach to tech design, development and deployment and why is this recommendation essential for achieving gender equality?
3. How to increase public and private sector commitments and investments in evidence-based initiatives aimed at bridging the gender digital divide?
What will participants gain from attending this session? This session brings together multi stakeholder partner advocates on Technology and Innovation in a thought-provoking dialogue on impact and collective actions to be taken to influence digital policies and leverage technology to influence social norms and shape more equal societies in line with the recommendations of the CSW67.
Description:
The rapid advancement of digital technology is changing the way we live, communicate, work, learn and take decisions. However technology does not determine society, society shapes technology according to the needs, values, and interests of people who develop and use the technology. Nowadays, digital technologies are how and where power is fashioned and embedded and the digital divide has become the new face of gender inequality.
This calls for a great paradigm shift, to reassert human agency over technology and explore new avenues to adopt a human-centric approach to digitalization, with the feminist principles of inclusion, intersectionality and systemic change at its core.
We want to provide participants with concrete tools and policy options to operate this shift, building on the agreed conclusions of CSW67 which includes a variety of recommendations endorsed by all UN Member States to shape a more inclusive, diverse and equal digital transformation. This will include a dialogue on:
- the most transformative recommendations of CSW67, reflecting on strategies of implementation and potential challenges
- the adoption of whole-of-society approaches and multi-stakeholder collaborations to mainstream gender in digital policies
- how to build on CSW conclusions to positively influence on-going normative processes including Global Digital Compact.
The session aims to bring together a variety of stakeholders to:
- Demonstrate technology and innovation can provide solutions to achieve gender equality the empowerment of all women and girls (deliver on SDG5)
- Highlight the critical role multi stakeholder partnerships in implementing CSW67 recommendations and thus in advancing gender equality in the digital world, in collaboration with feminists movements.
- Provide a space for partners working at the intersection of technology and gender to meet and make practical plans for new collaborations.
Hybrid Format: This will be a global hybrid event. We will record the session and disseminate it within our network of 3,000 partners across the world and will seek interpretation for online participants in French and Spanish. Pre event, we would like to mobilize online participants across regions and invite them to feed into the questions we will be posing panelists and select most common ones. Pre session, we will use our social media platform to mobilize participants and advocate for key messages which we would like to convey at the session. We will invite online and in-person participants to connect before the event to meet virtually and ensure a lively dialogue between panelists.