These are just some of the issues that are being raised by the 56 participants to the Asia-Pacific Gender Forum for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), one of the side events for the Asian Regional Conference for the WSIS that is currently being held in Tokyo, Japan.
The Gender Forum participants also express concern over the absence of a gender perspective in assessing the implications of national and international ICT policies, programmes and projects for women and men that only further perpetuate the gender and digital divide.
They assert that the developments that shape the information society should pursue goals of gender equality and women’s advancement, as well as social, political and economic justice, sustainable human development, and support for cultural and linguistic diversity.
The women are also calling on all government delegates to the Tokyo meeting to make mandatory the collection and accessibility of sex-disaggregated data and the development of gender-sensitive indicators in the access, use, and impact of, ICT.
As to the economic impact of the new ICT, the Gender Forum participants drew attention to the jobs that are being generated especially in developing countries. Most of these jobs, according to the participants, are in the service industries in information processing, banking, insurance, printing and publishing. Outsourcing jobs for women, notably in India and the Philippines, are in call centres, information services and data entry, as well as geographic information systems and software programming. As in many other industries, Women have not reached technical, managerial and decision-making high-level positions.
The Asia Pacific Gender Forum was organised by Asian Pacific Women's Information Network Centre(APWINC), Association for Progressive Communication Women's Networking Support Programme(APC-WNSP) and Japan Women’s Watch, in collaboration with Isis International-Manila, Hong Kong Federation of Women' s Centres, IT for Change, NPO Coper, Korean Women's Development Institute, Campaign for Popular Media Reform and the Centre for Women’s Research -Sri Lanka.
Following is the statement of the Gender Forum for the Asian Regional Conference:
-report from: Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, Isis International-Manila
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