1 / 50

Introduction

Application of ICT in Mainstreaming of Gender in The Global Market And Women Entrepreneurship Promotion. Introduction.

oma
Télécharger la présentation

Introduction

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Application of ICT in Mainstreaming of Gender in The Global Market And Women Entrepreneurship Promotion

  2. Introduction “The emergence of electronic commerce over the past decade has radically transformed the economic landscape. For developing countries, the digital revolution offers unprecedented opportunities for economic growth and development, as entrepreneurs from Bangalore to Guadalajara to Dakar can testify.” Kofi A. Annan

  3. Introduction • Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are not only a significant factor in the performance and growth of economies - the importance of which is continuously growing -,but they also represent a novel and effective tool to help advance sustainable human development (SHD).

  4. Introduction • The Buenos Aires Declaration on Global Telecommunication Development for the Twenty-first Century stated that telecommunications are an essential component of political, economic, social, and cultural development and the basis of the global information society

  5. Introduction • ICTs allow faster delivery and a more adapted content of technical assistance in a variety of sectors - ranging from long-distance education, telemedicine, environmental management to strengthening of participatory approaches and the creation of new livelihoods.

  6. Introduction • ICTs allow access to information sources worldwide, promote networking transcending borders, languages and cultures, foster empowerment of communities, women, youth and socially disadvantaged groups, and help spread knowledge about "best practices" and experience. • ICTs are indispensable to realize the global information society and the global knowledge society.

  7. Introduction • Women are a vulnerable group throughout the world, and are targeted e-international and national efforts to improve their status. Lack of knowledge is the main reason why women are considered a vulnerable group. • Having ICT-literate women who use it to advance in their careers is important to help them keep up with the global trends and live up to the international standards.

  8. Factors hindering women access to ICT • A series of factors, including literacy and education, language, time, cost, geographical location of facilities, social and cultural norms, and women's computer and information search and dissemination skills constrain women's access to information technology.

  9. Factors hindering women access to ICT • Science and technology education. • Women’s access to resources is limited due to biases resulting from the family arbitration system. • Lack of women’s grassroots organizations prevents their participation in development activities.

  10. Factors hindering women access to ICT • Constraints to the preparation and implementation of appropriate development plans. • Lack of regional gender-desegregated data. • Absence of women’s groups because of cultural taboos. • Weak collaboration with non-governmental or private entities.

  11. Objectives of ICT Applications • Mainstreaming of gender in global market. • Economic empowerment of women. • Women entrepreneurship promotion.

  12. Mainstreaming of gender in global market • Access to labor market: • According to the ILO World Employment Report 2001, the greatest potential for job creation globally is within the core IT sector.

  13. Economic Violence Against Women • Definition: • Economic violence against women is the suffering of women from poverty, deprivation of Job opportunities & her capability to increase her income & her standard of living.

  14. Economic Violence Against Women • The unemployment of females in Egypt is 21% against 5% in Males. • 27% of the men headed families are below the line of poverty while on the other hand 45% of the women headed house hold are below the line of poverty. • The average wages for males is 54 L.E. compared to that of females 37 L.E. which is 69% of the wages of the males.

  15. Economic Violence Against Women • Although there is equal pay for the same job & the labor law does not discriminate in salaries between males or females in the same job. • Women have access to only 12% of the microloans. • Women own only 3% of the cultivated land.

  16. Factors contributing to Economic Violence against women • Education: • The tradition & culture concentrates on the education of males as the main supporter of the family with negligence to women’s education increasing her dependency on the male partner. • Training: • She has less chance to improve her talents & hence qualify for prestigious jobs requiring certain skills & I.T technology. Thus women contribute 22% of the labor market in the lowest occupational ladder with medium wages as their training opportunities are much less than the male opportunities. • Economic Awareness & Women Entrepreneurship: • The promotion of women Entrepreneurship is closely linked with their economic awareness & their ability to establish their own enterprises though formal equality exists in the constitution.

  17. Empowerment through employment of women • ICT makes the role of time and distance less significant in organising business and production related activities. • Women therefore can work from anywhere and at anytime and raise that extra income to become more financially independent and empowered.

  18. Empowerment through employment of women • Recently, companies like Ford and General Electrics have moved their back-end operations to Asia and employ a large number of women workers having basic information technology and data management skills. • New areas of employment such as tele-marketing, medical transcription etc. have also opened up tremendous job opportunities for women. These jobs are definitely under-paid and fall at the lower segment of ICT jobs; nevertheless, they are opening up avenues where none existed before.

  19. Entrepreneurship Promotion • Definition of An entrepreneur: • An entrepreneur is essentially a person who is not only self-employed but generates employment and income for others through a combination of efforts requiring zeal and capability to transform physical, financial, natural and human resources for production possibilities to extract the business potential within any situation.

  20. Entrepreneurship Promotion • Entrepreneurs should be able to produce innovative goods and services to suit to the market demand as well as earn a profit. Besides the above qualities, women entrepreneurs need to have additional quality in terms of determination and tenacity and additional skills in terms to access to ICT to cope with adverse situations, which seem to confront the female entrepreneurs more than their male counterparts in a given situation.

  21. Promotion of Women’s Entrepreneurship • It is a means to alleviate women’s unemployment and poverty and also stimulate economic growth. • Women’s entrepreneurship promotion aims at eliminating gender specific barriers which limits women’s capacity to up businesses. These include inadequate access to information, business networks as well as the traditional attitude towards the gender role.

  22. Entrepreneurship Promotion Objectives • To contribute to the elaboration of strategies and policies supporting women in using their entrepreneurial potential. • To raise awareness among regional decision-makers concerning the importance of promoting women’s entrepreneurship. • To develop tools such as financing, incubators and seminars for encouraging potential women entrepreneurs.

  23. Entrepreneurship Promotion Objectives • To set up regional networks supporting women’s entrepreneurship. • To develop training and education that contributes to creating an entrepreneurship culture for women. • To contribute in the capacity building and training of entrepreneur regarding ICT.

  24. E-commerce and Women Entrepreneurship Promotion • E-commerce Definition: • Any use of information and communications technology by a business that helps to improve its interactions with customers or suppliers. • The definition encompasses both domestic and international business. SME’s may find beneficial ways to use e-commerce to enhance relationships with their domestic customers and suppliers as well as internationally.

  25. Creating class of women entrepreneurs • One of the most powerful applications of ICT in the domain of knowledge networking is electronic commerce. Electronic commerce refers not just to selling of products and services online but to the promotion of a new class of ICT-savvy women entrepreneurs in both rural and urban areas. • Women over time have learnt the advantages offered by ICT and its potential in opening up windows to the outside world. This has put them in a greater control over the activities performed by them- laying the foundation for entrepreneurship development

  26. Potential Gains from e-Commerce • Find new customers – and partners and suppliers – domestically and internationally • Serve current and new customers better, hence offering more value to them • Improve the efficiency of their business processes • Offer entirely new services and products – even start entirely new businesses.

  27. Marketing • Marketing is always an obstacle facing women entrepreneurship. ICT is crucial for marketing of products.

  28. Marketing Agreement • An agreement was done between Egyptian Federation of Business and Professional Women (BPW-Egypt), and the International Federation of Business and Professional Women (BPWI) to market BPW-Egypt women products via their website which is accessible to 50000 members in 100 countries. • Main Obstacle: • All the products to marketed are still not promoted using ICT tools, even just a CD catalogue as a marketing tool never existed.

  29. ICT Benefit For Women Owners Of SMEs • E-commerce may offer them comparatively more advantages to find new customers and suppliers especially in markets they have not easily been able to reach before – either internationally or regionally. • Access to Information: • The most valuable application is information accessing to facilitate their business and generating and disseminating information about it. Women entrepreneurs globally have said that access to information, especially market information, is their first priority in accelerating the growth of their businesses5.

  30. Role of Partners of Development in Promoting Gender Equity in Using IT

  31. Partners of Development • Building Partnerships: • It is necessary to involve strategic stakeholders from both the public and the private sectors. • These could include the government bodies, corporate firms, financial institutions and the NGOs. • Fostering corporate partnership in ICT ventures and raising of venture capital fund for social development projects becomes an important line of thought. • This could be done through a plethora of ways such as ICT based advertisement, using existing corporate infrastructure for opening of telecentres, bringing about transfer of technical expertise from corporate to the development sector.

  32. Partners of Development • Governments. • Civil Society. • Private Sector.

  33. Partners of Development • Governments: • Education. • IT Policy. • Telecommunication Infrastructure.

  34. A- Governments • Education: • Girls and women must acquire literacy and basic education to be able to fully utilize new technology. • Information technologies could be integrated into girls' education and women's literacy programs to expose girls to new technologies at early stages and allow for much needed integration of these two program areas.

  35. A- Governments • IT Policy: • IT policy must take gender into account to provide an enabling environment for women, and gender policy must take account of the opportunities that IT can bring. • Telecommunication Infrastructure: • The country must have good telecommunications infrastructure and an enabling environment that will attract jobs that women can fill. Requirements for teleworking are computer literate workers, reliable power supply, and adequate communication infrastructure5.

  36. B- Civil Society • NGOs contribute to the empowerment of women and development of human resource through: • Training. • Capacity Building. • Technical Assistance and Support Services. • Advocacy. • Project Development. • Networking.

  37. B- Civil Society • Training: • Women outside the formal schooling system and already in the workforce need access to technology training to retrain and upgrade skills as well as to acquire new ones. Such improvement requires interventions at all levels of education.

  38. B- Civil Society • Capacity Building: • Empowerment of women in the context of knowledge societies is understood as building the ability and skills of women to gain insight of actions and issues in the external environment which influence them, and to build their capacity to get involved and voice their concerns in these external processes, and make informed decisions. • It entails building up of capacities of women to overcome social and institutional barriers, and strengthening their participation in the economic and political processes for an overall improvement in their quality of lives.

  39. B- Civil Society • Technical Assistance and Support services: • Human resource development for system support: To ensure the presence of girls and women among the technologically trained, campaigns could be developed to attract and retain women professionals. • Advocacy: • Strengthening institutional capacity to integrate gender considerations in policies and programs and supporting women's equitable access to training is required to ensure that telecommunications address women's needs and concerns more effectively.

  40. B- Civil Society • Project Development: • Effective partnerships with NGOs which extend beyond disaster relief and mitigation to include a range of project development, implementation and delivery systems can contribute to the effectiveness and range of telecommunications systems. • Many innovative activities and models for telecommunications networks are being developed by NGOs which contribute to improved consultation, human resource development, and incorporating gender equality considerations. • Programs will have to be designed and put in place that ensures women's access to the technologies that can empower them in many aspects of their lives.

  41. Civil Society • Networking: • Networking is crucial to have access to the global market. • Affiliation to regional and international women organizations.

  42. Private Sector • Should mobilize its resources and invest in the field of ICT. • Share the social responsibility of the capital in funding training programs for the uses of ICT for women Entrepreneurship.

  43. Conclusion • Access to the global market: • Information and communication technologies have enormous potential to link remote communities to global markets, to make telemedicine and telework available to communities in need, to democratize decision-making, to support distance learning. But if the global community and national policy makers are not proactive about ensuring that the benefits of IT are equally available to and shaped by women and men, we will fail to reap the full potential of these powerful tools.

  44. Conclusion • ICT is a way to alleviate poverty and contribute to the solution of elimination of economic violence against women and hindering women access to the labor market. • Without full participation in the use of information technology, women are left without the key to participation in the global world of the twenty-first century.

  45. Recommendations • A brain-storming meeting was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 21-23 November 2003, for the building of the African Union in 21st century. • It recommended to encourage member states to promote investments in ICT to enhance the development of the African private sector. • A project was submitted to the African Union for economic women empowerment through ICT.

  46. Recommendations • During the 2nd Pan AfroArab Congress of Business and Professional Women held in Cairo, April, 2003, it was recommended to establish an E-Catalogue gathering the products and services of women entrepreneurs in the Arab World and Africa to achieve economic integration in the region and open international markets which acts as a marketing tool to empower women economically.

  47. Recommendations • Concentrate on the export of services and products using ICT. • Establishment of a Databank for Business women, experts, industries, products, etc…….

  48. Recommendations • Partners of Development should: • Put a plan of action for increasing of ICT awareness among women and organizing training courses for capacity building. • Raise awareness, build vision and advise on policies to capture information and knowledge for development. • Promote and build connectivity and necessary infrastructure for access to information and development. • Build required human and social capacities and institutions and provide training and education to impart requisite skills.

  49. Recommendations • Leverage partnerships with the private sector (they have the know-how), business associations, teaching institutions, technical schools or any other associations of SME’s. • Meet with and work with women’s professional associations – or other organizations with women business owners as members.

  50. Recommendations • Provide support to several innovative approaches to e-readiness training by different organizations and then facilitate the replication of the successful ones in other areas. • Conduct pilot projects to demonstrate the feasibility, suitability and impact of ICTs for sustainable human development (SHD) through electronic community centres.

More Related