Bridging the ‘gender digital divide’ is about more than ensuring that women and girls have basic access to the Internet and cell phones; it means providing training so they have the skills to use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to their benefit, and taking active measures to boost the numbers of women in ICT leadership positions, including in academia and entrepreneurship.
After hearing from many of the world’s top women politicians on Tuesday in a session on “Women in Power”, Secretary-General António Guterres, held a Town Hall meeting for civil society activists where he underscored the importance of women seizing the initiative in the struggle for gender equality.
There has been a “serious regression” in the political power of women across the world in recent years, UN General Assembly President María Fernanda Espinosa told delegates to the annual summit of women activists at UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday.
A wheelchair-bound Pakistani mother who yearned to visit a park without worrying about ramp access, and a young South Sudanese woman who dreams of having affordable health care, were among the speakers opening the United Nation’s largest annual gathering on gender equality and women’s rights on Monday.
Under the theme “Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change”, the United Nations hosted its flagship event celebrating International Women’s Day on Friday to recognize unsung women from across the world, and encourage innovation to transform lives.
Women’s empowerment and gender equality are “essential to global progress”, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed in his message for International Women's Day which this year puts “innovation by women and girls, for women and girls”, at the heart of efforts to achieve gender equality.
Women’s job opportunities have barely improved since the early 1990s, UN labour experts said on Thursday, warning that female workers are still penalized for having children and looking after them.
A group of seven United Nations rights experts issued a clarion call on Tuesday to break the taboo around menstrual health for women and girls that persists in many parts of the world and take concrete action to end “disempowering” discrimination.
A teacher holds up a drawing of an adolescent girl who has just been caught unawares by her first menstruation cycle, while at school. She’s addressing neat rows of young women sitting in class, in the town of Bol, in Chad.
“I think it's almost a joke that it will take the world so long to create women empowerment, particularly as we know that there’s an economic upside in empowering women in the range of $28 trillion.”
