Initial plans for our work to support BBGWG (see http://blog.raulza.me/?p=2041) changed dramatically as the private donor who had publicly committed to support the WG pulled the funding. As a result, we had to rapidly craft a plan B which was coordinated by the ITU’s Broadband Commission Secretariat. ITU agreed to provide a coordinator for the drafting of the report which will build on substantive inputs provided by WG members.and 18 con
Three months and 18 contributions later, we finally received the first draft report (Gender Report _v1_12 August_for circulation, not for circulation please!). At the Mexico meeting, we had also agreed to a broad ToC for the report. The concept note is here.
I submitted the comments below to ITU Secretariat in order to discuss the report at a conference call. At the call we agreed to edit the report and get back to them by the end of this week. The Secretariat agreed to rework chapter 4 on the inputs by the various organizations and organize them according to themes and best practices.
1. I am not able to match the current table of contents with the ToC that we had in the concept note.
2. The draft is a bit weak on the development and governance sides. There is too much on technology. We also need to address the fact that ICTs and access to them is a means to an end.
3. We also need to say that ICTs are not neutral nor are they a panacea for all of women’s issues. Having access to ICTs does not per se guarantee gender equality at the socio-economic level. In other words,
parity in access does not automatically mean parity in all other areas where women are at a disadvantage.
4. The section on best practices is still just a collection of what various WG members are doing. We need to synthesize these content and move the actual inputs to an annex.
5. The policy recommendation in the last chapter need to be strengthened by adding some of the above points.
These are very broad points that we can discuss in more detail during our hangout…
Cheers, Raúl
