Introduction
ITU GEM Policy was adopted by the decision of the
ITU Council at its 2013 session.The aim of the Union's Gender Equality and Mainstreaming Policy is to present a shared vision for integrating a gender perspective throughout ITU and to become a model organization for gender equality and to leverage the power of telecommunications/ICTs to empower both women and men. It also helps bring ITU into line with the UN System-Wide Action Plan (UN-SWAP) on gender empowerment, which has been endorsed by ITU. The main policy objectives are: To allow men and women to contribute equally to the work of the organization. To allow men and women to benefit equally from ICTs, to help reduce inequalities. To strengthen gender mainstreaming in ITU's activities. To provide an accountability framework for internal monitoring.
An internal Gender Task Force was established in September 2012 and is fulfilling main objectives of ensuring a coordinated implementation of Resolution 70 and report progress to the governing bodies of ITU. Also the Task Force oversees the implementation of the ITU GEM Policy.The ITU secretariat has produced a set of general Gender Guidelines to assist staff and elected officials in bringing a more gender-sensitive approach to all aspects of their work for recruitment, staff management, programme management, communication, and training. The staff rules and regulations have been amended as well as the terms of reference of statutory committees to include gender balance in nomination of the members and gender sensitivity within their mandate and working methods.
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Gender Equality tutorial - "I KNOW GENDER"
The UN Women Training Centre eLearning Campus - global and innovative online platform for training for gender equality is open to everybody interested in using training or learning as a means to advance gender equality, women's empowerment and women's rights.
ITU is ranked 3rd in the UN system in terms of the number of staff having already completed the modules.
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Activities in collaboration with other UN agencies and the private sector
System-wide Action Plan (SWAP) on gender equality and women's empowerment
United Nations General Assembly resolution 64/289 mandated UN Women to lead, coordinate, and promote accountability of the United Nations system in its work on gender equality and the empowerment of women. To this end, UN Women elaborated the System-wide Action Plan (SWAP) on gender equality and women's empowerment. The UN-SWAP is the accountability framework to systematically revitalize, capture, monitor and measure performance on mainstreaming gender perspectives into the work of the UN system. It was created as a request to ECOSOC, endorsed by the United Nations Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) in 2012, and it is now coordinated through UN Women. A second generation of the System-wide Action Plan (UN-SWAP 2.0) was developed and launched in 2018. The bar has been raised with new and strengthened indicators. The 17 Performance Indicators (PI) are organized in two sections: Gender-related SDG results and Institutional strengthening to support achievements of results. See the UN-SWAP Report Cards for 2018 and 2019 here.
