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

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.

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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.

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Factors hindering women access to ICT

• Science and technology education.
• Womens access to resources is limited due to
  biases resulting from the family arbitration
  system.
• Lack of womens grassroots organizations prevents
  their participation in development activities.

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Factors hindering women access to ICT

• Constraints to the preparation and implementation
  of appropriate development plans.
• Lack of regional gender-desegregated data.
• Absence of womens groups because of cultural
  taboos.
• Weak collaboration with non-governmental or
  private entities.

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Objectives of ICT Applications

• Mainstreaming of gender in global market.
• Economic empowerment of women.
• Women entrepreneurship promotion.

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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.

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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.

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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 womens 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.

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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.

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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.

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Promotion of Womens Entrepreneurship

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

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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 womens
  entrepreneurship.
• To develop tools such as financing, incubators
  and seminars for encouraging potential women
  entrepreneurs.

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Entrepreneurship Promotion Objectives

• To set up regional networks supporting womens
  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.

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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. SMEs 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

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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.

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Marketing

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

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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.

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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.

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

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Partners of Development

• Governments.
• Civil Society.
• Private Sector.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Recommendations

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

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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.

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Recommendations

• Leverage partnerships with the private sector
  (they have the know-how), business associations,
  teaching institutions, technical schools or any
  other associations of SMEs.
• Meet with and work with womens 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.