CFP: INSTRAW - Gender and ICTs

["Irfan Khan" <khania@super.net.pk>]

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From:           	"Jeannie Ash de Pou" <jash@un-instraw.org>
To:             	gkd@phoenix.edc.org
Date sent:      	Wed, 3 Apr 2002 10:14:24 -0500


                 INSTRAW Call for Papers

                     Gender and ICTs

Background

Information and communication technologies are recognized as key
elements of the new global knowledge-based economy, ensuring rapid
and continuous transfer of commercial, financial and political
information crucial to the development process. However, it has been
argued that women worldwide lag overwhelmingly behind men in the
access to and use of ICTs. This newly developing gender gap is being
argued to be a major source of gender inequality and one of the major
obstacles to mainstreaming a gender perspective in development.

In order to address the gender digital gap, the 1995 World Conference
on Women (Beijing) delineated a strategy to promote greater access to
communication by women internationally. Equally, the Beijing+5
Conference (2000, New York) called upon development cooperation to
strengthen the capacity of women to use new technologies for
advancing their position and for achieving gender equality and thus
sustainable development.

As a result, many initiatives have been undertaken by women and
womenís organizations that aim at providing women with an access to
ICTs as tools for social and economic empowerment. Furthermore,
national and international agencies have also pursued many
initiatives in order to ensure that women are not deprived of the
benefits of the emerging "information society". Many of these
initiatives, however, have been undertaken in relative isolation from
one another, and thus are not informed by shared learning
experiences.  Nor are these projects and initiatives necessarily
integrated from the beginning into larger development policy
frameworks.


INSTRAW Collaborative Research Project on Gender and ICTs

To address the need for sharing of knowledge and learning about
gender aspects of ICTs, INSTRAW is initiating a collaborative
research programme which aims:

*  To ascertain the state-of-the-art in terms of access and use,
management and regulation, and impact of ICTs on women.

*  To determine the constituents of an enabling/disabling
environment.

*  To gain a better understanding of how women and men are involved
in ICTs, particularly in the developing countries;

*  To investigate what is presently being done by key stakeholders to
promote and support projects aimed at the equal participation of
women and men in ICTs in developing countries;

*  To propose ways in which ICTs can better serve as an important
tool for empowerment and close the gender gap if and where such
exists.

In order to achieve this, INSTRAW is inviting the submission of
Papers to be used as background information for the Virtual Workshops
that will be held online through INSTRAWís Gender Awareness
Information and Networking System (GAINS). The papers should address
the following issues:

1)  Gender dimension of access and use of ICTs through profiling of
women and men using ICTs (age/income/region); how women and men- and
in what ratio -access and use ICTs and for what purpose; what
information is accessed; where it is used (private/public domain),
etc..

2)  Gender dimensions of management and regulation of ICTs: how women
and men participate in ICTs (as users/producers/managers/specialists-
designers, technicians, analysts, etc); what are the existing ICT-
related regulations and norms on the international and national
levels as well as the existing regulatory instruments and tools and
how do women participate;

3) Impact assessment on a sectoral basis: how ICTs impact on women
and men: cultural (changes in cultural norms and stereotypes);
social/political (empowers and enhances cooperation, negotiation,
social action); and economic (new skills/employment). Why, if so,
ICTs impact differently on women and men - education and training;
socialization patterns; availability (cost, priorities, interest -
women are poorer, have different priorities and interests).

4)  Examination of country/regional/sub-regional variations in access
to and use of ICTs; analysis of experiences; lessons learned and good
national/regional practices.


Authors should submit a 500 word abstracts to INSTRAW no later than
22 April 2002, together with a brief resume of their
academic/professional background and experience. INSTRAW will select
the most relevant abstracts by 1 May 2002 and commission the authors
of the selected papers to prepare full versions of the papers.
Authors will be paid a fee of US$ 1,000 per paper. The specific terms
and conditions of this assignment will be discussed with the authors
on an individual basis once the selection process has been finalized.
Authors should submit their papers to INSTRAW by 1 June 2002 and are
expected to present them at the Gender and ICTs Virtual Workshops
which will be held during the 3rd quarter of 2002 through GAINS. It
is important to note that the papers should be based on original
research and should not be more than 7,000 words in length.

Abstracts should be sent to Tatjana Sikoska at:

tsikoska@un-instraw.org


For more information about INSTRAW and GAINS, please visit: www.un-
instraw.org



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