Gender Caucus in WSIS - Challenges for Gender Equality

This article describes the challenges faced by gender equality advocates in relation to The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) where, according

to the author, Heike Jensen, "the predominance of a gender-blind and hence male-centered discussion process has made it hard to even achieve a basic

commitment to women’s human rights."

Jensen's article describes her concerns with the advancement of development issues in respect to what she sees as backsliding of women's rights and the core value of gender equality when it comes to the global political process. As Jensen points out, "all digital divides, from the urban-rural one to the ones caused by differences in income, education or age, have specific ramifications for women and girls and

disadvantage them disproportionately in comparison to men and boys."

Jensen contends that WSIS meetings held in Geneva 2003, and Tunis in 2005, were a "serious challenge" for gender equality advocates. Jensen frames her
concern by noting that this is particularly worrying "given the growing realisation that development will not occur if girls and women continue to be discriminated against." According to Jensen, the isolation of women from the mainstream economy was historically based in part on their lack of access to information because of societal, cultural and market constraints. Now advances for women must include primary and secondary education as well as tools to help them become top-level decision makers in all areas relating to ICTs.

Jensen describes strategic gender interests related to media and information and communication technologies (ICTs) as including those that help women overcome isolation; allow them to network and to gain strength as political actors; enable their articulation of human rights; provide effective means to hold governments and other social actors responsible for their conduct, and harness the technologies to lift them out of poverty and to secure a livelihood. She also notes that new ICT's should not make women more vulnerable in regard to surveillance and lack of privacy when it comes issues such as political activism, health care and consumer data. In respect to media literacy, Jensen also mentions that "girls and women have a particular stake in it as long as information and knowledge are biased towards male world-views and hence are in effect tools of hegemony that marginalise and distort girls’ and women’s concerns, experiences and realities as well as the images they hold of themselves."

In respect to WSIS, Jensen notes that a number of provisions have been made that attempt to achieve gender advocacy but she suggests that this issue remains unanswered: whether or not the overall framework and agenda into which these references to women and girls were inserted will prove to be conducive for the fulfillment of the provisions, or whether the framework will instead corrupt these gender-related goals."

The author states, "information and communication are at the root of every society’s core processes of negotiating power, norms, values and realities." She

sums up her thoughts in this concluding remark: "It is hence indispensable for women’s rights advocates to fight for the Information Society as a positive utopia, as a society in which everyone can fully join in and benefit from a free flow of communication, an exchange of ideas and the generation of knowledge.
Only on this basis can social justice and gender justice, women’s and men’s human rights and cultural diversity flourish and societies develop in a
sustainable manner. "