Good morning and welcome to the women's breakfast. This is a special breakfast as we are not just networking but we are also:
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honoring our women's ministers
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taking stock of progress that has been made since WSIS, since the MDG summit in 2000
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and perhaps most importantly since the Beijing conference on women which will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year.
It's also a special breakfast because it is the first in a series of four Gender Equality and Mainstreaming events that will take place here at the Plenipotentiary Conference. On the 28th of October we will host the First Gender Equality and Mainstreaming in Technology Awards, known as the GEM-Tech Awards.
Organized together with UN Women, the competition attracted over 360 nominees from 74 countries. The winners will be with us next week on the 28th of October during the Award Ceremony. We will also host a high level dialogue during the lunch segment and finally we will conclude with a Gala celebration in the evening. I hope you will be able to join us for each of those events.
20 years ago, at the Beijing conference, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was adopted. The Beijing platform for Action calls for several actions to be taken in the context of technology.
Beijing set the most important global overarching framework for gender empowerment in the world. The declaration and platform for action in 1995 called for: equal access to economic resources, including information and communication; called for affordable access,
But we know that today at least 200 million fewer women than men have access to the internet.
Beijing also call for equal participation in both the technical and decision-making areas of communications and the mass media.
A few stats on where we are today:
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Only 6% of the CEOs of top 100 tech companies are women
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Only 9% of European app developers are female – and only 19% of ICT managers;
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Male/female ratio of computer science degrees 80:20. It used to be closer to 50/50
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4 years ago, we had 25 women ministers total out of our 193 member states. Today we have 16.
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And of the 161 independent regulators, only 12 are led by women.
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AT the PP in Guadalajara, We had 21% of women delegates in 2010, and for this PP we again have just 21% of the announced delegates as women.
While we still have far to go in realizing the full promise of the Beijing agenda, Beijing +20 is an opportunity galvanize recommitment.
But we have an opportunity right here is Busan.
This PP is an incredible opportunity for us to advance the issue not just through Resolution 48 and Resolution 70, but also through the discussions will be having about digital inclusion… It's not just about getting women in the sector it's about enabling them to use ICTs to empower themselves…
We also have another opportunity through the Post 2015 Development Agenda process. Next September, the Millennium Development Goals will be replaced by the Sustainable Development Agenda for the post-2015 era.
The importance of ICTs has already been recognized as a tool of empowerment for women in the proposed goals; and we need to make sure that it stays there when they begin talking about the implementation of the goals.
Let's make sure over the next year we put the spotlight on the potential that ICTs provide for women to better themselves, their families and their communities.
The proof is there. Having had the privilege of reviewing the 360 GEM-Tech nominations, there is plenty of room to be positive. So much is happening on the ground – what we need to do now is scale. In the words of the UNSG yesterday in our opening ceremony, we must harness the power of ICTs for economic and social empowerment for both men and women alike.
I muss stress the importance of men and thank all those men that have joined us.
If you haven't yet signed on to the UN women He for She campaign. I encourage you to do so.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to my colleagues in the ITU. It was a real team efforts. In particular, I would like to thank Gitanjali, Sarah, Jude, Wendy, Nikos and so many others here and in Geneva. And of course I would like to thank Walda Roseman.
I would now like to introduce our Secretary General, Dr Hamadoun Touré, who has championed gender issues over his 16 year tenure in the ITU.
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