Norway Pledges Contribution to Support ITU in
Bridging the Gender Divide

Istanbul, 22 March 2002 — The Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communication has pledged a financial contribution to reinforce the gender-based activities of the Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) of the International Telecommunication Union. If approved by the World Telecommunication Development Conference in Istanbul this week, the proposed contribution would enable the BDT to set up a full-time unit to mainstream gender issues into the activities of the development sector and to ITU as a whole.

"The strategic importance of empowering women as managers, consumers and owners of ICTs can never be highlighted enough," said Hamadoun Touré, Director of the BDT. "We are very pleased that Norway has backed this intention with action and will contribute tangible resources to strengthen one of the many BDT-led strategies for bridging the Digital Divide."

"Making better use of human resources and skills of women significantly adds to the pool of talent which will be needed in the new information society," said Eva Hildrum, Director-General of Posts and Telecommunications at the Ministry of Transport and Communications. "Strengthening the gender perspective in a technologically-oriented organization like ITU will require resources, attention, patience and focus and the BDT has the natural lead in engendering telecommunication technology, policy and management."

Patricia Faccin, Secretary to the Task Force on Gender Issues, noted that full-time professional gender expertise in the BDT would enable ITU to make greater progress in gender analysis, disaggregated statistics and the integration of a gender perspective in policy and regulatory issues within ITU, Member States and Sector Members as well as in monitoring and evaluating projects and programmes to assess gender implications. A gender unit will also be able to provide advice to ITU management on the role that the organization should take as a leader in gender and ICTs, as a part of the many international initiatives to bridge the Digital Divide. It would also enable ITU to ensure the continuation of efforts to mainstream gender into its strategic, operational and budgetary plans.

In a paper to WTDC-02, Norway underscores the importance of a gender policy in telecommunication restructuring and planning for developing countries. Encouraging the strategic development of medium, small or micro-sized telecommunication businesses, many of which are run by or specifically-targeted for women, is a very effective means to provide access to communications for under-served and lower-income areas and populations.

At WTDC-02, Brazil has endorsed the establishment of a programme on gender issues in the Istanbul Action Plan, which is expected to emerge at the end of the world’s highest-level conference on telecommunication in developing countries. Such a programme would inter alia:

• encourage the mainstreaming of a gender perspective through appropriate administrative mechanisms and processes within the regulatory agencies, ministries and promote inter-organizational cooperation and gender related initiatives in the telecommunication sector;
• promote access to rural ICT facilities such as telecentres operated and managed by women;
• promote gender analysis as part of a policy review process and to develop and establish systems to gather gender statistics.

The Task Force on Gender Issues (TFGI) shadows the six programmes of the ITU’s Valletta Action Plan and fosters gender awareness in the telecommunication sector in developing countries. The results of the latest survey on gender and the development sector may be found here.

Among the spin-off activities from the Task Force on Gender Issues, in which the BDT has taken the lead, are, for example, Yugoslavia’s Info-communications for Schools project to obtain redundant computer equipment from the private sector and give them away to schools in rural areas where the teachers are women. The Yugoslavia TFGI is also proposing an ICT women’s educational centre, which will organize ICT training for women trainers. It has also planned to create a moveable centre, which will offer the possibility of on site training in rural areas.

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