Gender, media and information and communication technologies are being taken up as critical issues at the ongoing B+10 High Level Intergovernmental Meeting in Asia-Pacific being held in Bangkok under the auspices of the UN Economic and Social Council of Asia-Pacific (UNESCAP).

In the meeting's first panel held on Tuesday, September 7, resource person Nancy Hafkin, defined a gender-responsive society as a 'corrective to the gender digital divide' and called on government delegates from National Women's Machineries to be actively involved in national ICT policy processes to ensure that a gender perspectives is integrated in ICT policies in the national level. She outlined the main concerns in the region as employment, access, capacity building, content, sexual exploitation and harassment on the internet, the lack of sex-disaggregated data and gender indicators, ICT for development and engendering ICT policies. ICTs and the information society has become a major concern because of the huge impact of rapidly accelerating globalisation and transition to knowledge-based economies in the region. In particular, the expansion of business process outsourcing (BPO) has changed many aspects of women's IT employment and has become a major issue in women's information society-related work in the ESCAP region. Discussions in the meeting revealed that women continue to be employed in the least skilled positions in the information processing work in the Philippines and India.

Another dimension of the issue highlighted in the ongoing discussions was the connection between ICT and development and the necessity for ensuring that women benefit from ICT for development programs that are being implemented in countries in the region. This includes the mobilization of resources to effectively use ICT in the provision of government social services to its citizenry such as health services and education.

In the session held the next day, September 8, the need to focus on mainstreaming gender in national ICT policies and the importance of community media for women were addressed. It was pointed out that while the use of the women's movement of ICT's have increased tremendously in the last ten years since the Beijing conference, the women's movement and majority of National Women Machineries have not considered ICTs as a development concern or as a political issue. On the other hand, in the same period, national ICT policies, plans and programs have been developed by many governments in the region mostly without reference to gender nor women's empowerment. There is a greater need now to bring gender issues in the national level and to mobilize gender advocates to address these issues.

The discussion also paid attention to the community and independent media as enabling and relevant mechanisms that can address emerging issues highlighted in this conference, by providing avenues for more active engagement for women in their communities to work with their governments and relevant agencies to achieve the goals of gender equality. Therefore governments need to create more responsive regulatory frameworks to support all forms of community media, in particular community broadcasting.

Meanwhile, women's organisations advocating around media and ICT issues released a statement containing the following recommentations:

*Universal Access is ensured to all women and men, communities and nations to ensure the right to access and effectively use the information and knowledge they need to address their development concerns.

*Governance and ICT Policies must enable full and equal participation of women. A gender perspective must be incorporated by all stakeholders involved in the process of planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating national ICT plans and programs.

*Employment: It is imperative to counter the historical patterns of gender segregation in employment within the ICT sector,

*Global Knowledge: All stakeholders must promote the maintenance and growth of the common wealth of human knowledge as a means of reducing global inequality and of providing the conditions for intellectual creativity and sustainable development.

*Violence Against Women: Policy and regulatory frameworks to address the use of the internet should be developed inclusively and transparently with all stakeholders, particularly women, and be based on the international human rights framework encompassing rights related to privacy and
confidentiality, freedom of expression and opinion and other related rights.

The recommendations were endorsed by the World Association of Community Broadcasters (AMARC)-Women's International Network, Isis International-Manila FemLink Pacific, Association for Progressive Communications Women's Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP), Antenna Foundation Nepal, and Sanharika Samuha-Nepal.

Chat Garcia Ramilo
APC WNSP
8 September 2004
Bangkok, Thailand