Speech by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-General
Women in Aerospace - Europe Networking Breakfast Opening
6 June 2016, Geneva, Switzerland
Distinguished participants,
Dear colleagues,
Good morning and on behalf of the ITU Secretary-General I am pleased to welcome you to ITU and this Women in Aerospace - Europe Networking Breakfast.
ITU is pleased to support this initiative to expand women's leadership opportunities and visibility in the aerospace sector.
ITU's membership has long recognized the benefits of equal participation of women and men in ITU's work and decision-making processes.
In 1998, the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference adopted Resolution 70 on the inclusion of a gender perspective in the work of the Union.
Since then, this Resolution has been updated at each Plenipotentiary Conference, and has inspired several initiatives – both internal, and external – aimed at building gender equality.
One of these is our international Girls in ICT Day, a global campaign to encourage girls and young women to consider a career in the ICT sector. Girls in ICT Day has been an overwhelmingly successful initiative for ITU, attracting major industry partners like Google and Microsoft. To date, we estimate that the campaign has reached over 200,000 girls in more than 160 countries worldwide.
Another very successful new initiative is our GEM-TECH Awards, which we hold annually in partnership with our sister agency UN Women. This event celebrates successful policies and projects in the area of female empowerment through ICTs, as well as personally recognizing some outstanding female leaders in this field as 'GEM-TECH Global Achievers'.
Since 2013, ITU has had its own gender equality and mainstreaming policy (GEM), which aims to ensure that the Union's commitment to gender equality is reflected in all decision-making and planning processes.
We recently released a set of Gender Guidelines in French and English, to help our staff better understand and implement this GEM policy in their day-to-day work.
We've also been working on capacity building for our female delegates by organizing a Women's Leadership Workshop alongside our World Radiocommunication Conference last year, and by supporting the US delegation in setting up a mentorship programme, called We Lead, for major ITU events. This mentorship programme puts younger or less experienced female delegates in touch with more experienced women, to help them develop their international negotiating and diplomacy skills.
Recently ITU Secretary-General became one of the founding members of the Geneva Gender Champions initiative led by US Ambassador Pamela Hamamoto and UNOG Director-General Michael Möller, has a particularly strong commitment to ensuring women benefit from equal opportunities for professional development and advancement in the ICT sector.
When joining the Geneva Gender Champions Initiative ITU made two commitments:
The first is to encourage Member States to include more female participants in delegations attending ITU conferences and meetings.
As part of this commitment, the ITU tracks and publishes the number of women delegates participating in all ITU conferences, assemblies and meetings, and gives recognition to the delegations with the highest level of female representation.
The second commitment is to adopt positive measures to improve gender balance among ITU staff.
Through these activities we have also seen some progress in the number of women delegates attending our conferences, assemblies and meetings, and women professionals in ITU. But it must be said that we are still a long way from achieving gender parity.
At the recent session of our Governing Council, which finished its work last week, the ITU Secretary-General stressed the importance of nominating women for chair and vice-chair positions of the conference. ITU's Council 2016 session was historic in that sense; it was the first time our Council was chaired and vice-chaired by women. We were very privileged to have two very distinguished delegates to fulfil these important roles.
Our Council Chair, Julie Zoller, is Senior Deputy Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy at the U.S. State Department. She is renowned in the international satellite radio regulations sector, and made history as ITU's first elected woman when she was nominated to chair the Radio Regulations Board.
Our distinguished Vice-Chair, Doctor Eva Spina, serves as Director of Spectrum Management Planning in Italy's Ministry of Economic Development. In line with ITU tradition she will go on to Chair the 2017 Council session.
This trend towards greater participation of women in leadership positions is very encouraging, and we wholeheartedly support the establishment of a Geneva chapter of Women in Aerospace.
Women in Aerospace represents an opportunity to build stronger connections between professionals in the Geneva area, well as helping build networks of like-minded professionals in Switzerland and across Europe and we support the participation of ITU staff in the association.
ITU will do what it can to support WIA, and I wish you an enjoyable and productive day.
Thank you.