Measuring Gender Digital Inequality in the Global South

Gitanjali Sah

A handbook has been developed to address the need for making digital policies and programs more gender-responsive. This handbook is the result of assessing successful gender-responsive strategies in 19 countries. It highlights the importance of government support in facilitating effective gender mainstreaming practices. Governments can aid these practices by providing technology, free internet access, or physical infrastructure. Examples of successful government support include the provision of laptops and mobile phones. Collaboration among stakeholders, including the private sector, governments, and international organizations, is key to successful gender mainstreaming. The handbook emphasizes the significance of partnerships in achieving this goal.

Furthermore, the handbook suggests that gender mainstreaming should be interconnected across different sectors. Successful practices are often intersectoral, involving multiple ministries and sectors to ensure gender inclusion. Recommendations for mainstreaming gender in digital policies include incorporating a specific objective in national strategic documents that focuses on women and girls. The handbook also advises implementing projects or programs that specifically address the needs of women and girls. Furthermore, setting gender criteria for assessing project proposals is recommended to actively promote gender mainstreaming.

The sentiment towards these initiatives is generally positive. The creation of the handbook represents a significant step forward in mainstreaming gender in digital policies and programs. By incorporating successful strategies from various countries and emphasizing the importance of government support and collaboration, the handbook provides valuable guidance for policymakers and stakeholders in the field. The recommendation of intersectoral collaboration and gender-specific objectives and criteria further strengthens the approach to gender mainstreaming. It is clear that gender mainstreaming is crucial for achieving gender equality and reducing inequalities, and these initiatives serve as important tools for positive change.

Audience

During the discussion, the speakers highlighted the significant role that leadership plays in promoting women’s businesses and shaping inclusive policymaking. They stressed the importance of leadership actively working towards inclusivity to create a more equal and balanced society.

Additionally, the speakers acknowledged the ongoing efforts in the areas of digital skills and education. They recognized the importance of these initiatives in equipping individuals with the necessary tools and knowledge for the digital era. However, they expressed concern about the lack of inclusive policymaking in these fields.

One of the speakers shared the opinion that although progress is being made in terms of digital skills and education, there is still much room for improvement in terms of inclusive policymaking. They argued that policies should be more inclusive and take into consideration various social, economic, and gender-related factors. This is crucial to ensure equal access and opportunities for everyone, regardless of their background.

The discussion concluded on a neutral note, without a clear endorsement or criticism. However, it emphasized the importance of elevating the role of leadership in women’s businesses and policymaking towards inclusivity. It also highlighted the need to strengthen inclusive policymaking in areas such as digital skills and education.

From this analysis, it is evident that there is a recognition of the positive impact that leadership and inclusive policymaking can have on promoting gender equality and reducing inequalities. There is also a call for policymakers to prioritize inclusivity in their decision-making processes.

Michael Best

Professor Michael Best emphasised the importance and value of the Equals Coalition in bridging the gender digital divide. The Equals Coalition is a global partnership of organisations that aim to promote gender balance in the technology sector. It is supported by leading research coalitions including KAIST and Georgia Tech. Professor Best himself is a founding member of the Equals Coalition. The gender digital divide refers to the inequality in access to and use of digital technologies between men and women. By highlighting the Equals Coalition, Professor Best acknowledges its efforts in addressing this issue and working towards creating a more equitable digital landscape.

Furthermore, Professor Best acknowledged the contributions of Dr. Ara Basay and Nancy Hafkin in the Equals Global Partnership and the inaugural ‘Taking Stock’ Report. Dr. Ara Basay, the former director of the gender technology lab at the UNU Computing and Society Institute, played a crucial role in the partnership. Nancy Hafkin, regarded as the dean of gender and ICTs, published her first research report on gender and digital divide issues in 1976. The ‘Taking Stock’ Report, edited by Dr. Ara Basay and Nancy Hafkin and contributed by 53 researchers globally, is a significant publication that sheds light on gender equality and reduced inequalities in the digital realm.

Moreover, Professor Best advocates for a data-driven approach to addressing the global gender digital divide. The Equals Global Partnership is built on the core principle of driving by data, which means driving with research. Professor Best believes that understanding the global gender digital divide and devising strategies to combat it require a comprehensive understanding of the issue, which can only be achieved through data-driven analysis. This aligns with the Sustainable Development Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals and its emphasis on collaboration and evidence-based decision-making.

In conclusion, Professor Best highlights the significance of the Equals Coalition in bridging the gender digital divide. He acknowledges the contributions of Dr. Ara Basay and Nancy Hafkin in the Equals Global Partnership and the ‘Taking Stock’ Report. Additionally, he emphasises the importance of a data-driven approach in understanding and combating the global gender digital divide. By shedding light on these key points, Professor Best contributes to the ongoing efforts to promote gender equality and reduce inequalities in the technology sector.

Moon Choi

KAIST, in collaboration with Georgia Tech and other institutions, is actively committed to achieving sustainable development goals and advancing gender equality. They approach gender inequality from various angles, including access to opportunities, development of skills, and promotion of leadership roles. This commitment is reflected in their participation in the eCourse project, which aims to address gender inequality and contribute to sustainable development goal number five.

The annual report, which involves collaboration from 53 authors, focuses on three key themes: access, leadership, and skills. The primary objective of the report is to provide practitioners and policymakers with the necessary information and insights to make informed decisions in order to foster gender equality. By consolidating the expertise and experiences of the authors, the report aims to offer valuable intelligence essential for envisioning strategies and implementing effective policies.

Furthermore, the report offers opportunities for researchers to contribute by either submitting a chapter or a case study. The chapters are expected to be between 4,000 and 6,000 words, while case studies should be between 1,000 and 1,500 words. This inclusive approach invites diverse perspectives and encourages researchers to share their knowledge and insights in tackling gender inequality.

Professor Moon Choi, the head of the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy at KAIST, plays a pivotal role in the eCourse Research Coalition, demonstrating KAIST’s deep involvement in the project and dedication to achieving gender equality. Professor Choi’s leadership and expertise contribute significantly to the coalition’s efforts towards sustainable development and gender equality.

The report exhibits a multi-sectoral approach by recruiting authors from the government, non-profit, and business sectors. This diverse participation ensures a comprehensive understanding and representation of various perspectives to address gender inequality effectively. In translating research findings into actionable practices, the report aims to bridge the gap between research and implementation, fostering tangible progress in the pursuit of gender equality.

Notably, Professor Moon Choi encourages the submission of statements of interest related to inclusive policymaking. This inclusive approach welcomes individuals from various sectors, including the private sector, to contribute their ideas and expertise. This collective effort and collaboration further enrich the report, enhancing its potential impact on policy and practice.

In conclusion, KAIST, alongside Georgia Tech and other institutions, is actively engaged in the eCourse project towards achieving sustainable development goals and gender equality. The annual report, written by a diverse group of authors, focuses on access, leadership, and skills, providing valuable intelligence for practitioners and policymakers. Professor Moon Choi’s leadership and involvement in the eCourse Research Coalition reflect KAIST’s dedication to advancing gender equality. The report’s inclusive approach invites chapters and case studies from researchers, encouraging diverse perspectives to address gender inequality effectively. By translating research findings into practices, the report aims to bridge the gap between research and implementation, fostering tangible progress.

Tamara Dancheva

Tamara Dancheva, the senior international relations manager with the Digital Gender Inclusion Task Force for the GSMA, plays a prominent role in promoting gender equality in the digital age. She is also the co-chair of the Equals Skills Coalition, further demonstrating her dedication to this cause.

Tamara introduces the GSMA and the Equals Global Partnership, which share the goal of promoting gender equality in the digital age. This partnership aims to create inclusive innovation ecosystems for women and girls in social innovation and entrepreneurship. It is important to note that this project receives funding from the EU Horizon 2020 programme, highlighting its recognition and support at the international level.

The project Tamara is involved in specifically aims to bridge the gap for girls and women in social innovation and entrepreneurship, helping them overcome the challenges and obstacles they face in this field. By identifying and addressing the so-called “valley of debt” that often hampers progress, this project strives to create smart, sustainable, and inclusive innovation ecosystems.

To achieve this, the project has conducted extensive research and held focus group discussions in 22 countries. Through these activities, four fundamental elements for an innovation-friendly environment have been identified. This valuable insight has led to the formulation of key policy recommendations for promoting gender-inclusive innovation standards.

Tamara emphasizes the importance of a gender-inclusive innovation standard, signifying her commitment to ensuring that women and girls have equal opportunities to contribute and succeed in the field of innovation. She highlights that gender-transformative innovations form the core of the gender-inclusive innovation standard, going beyond the mere creation of products and services. This focus on transformative change aims to address the underlying barriers and biases that exist in the innovation ecosystem.

In addition to promoting gender-inclusive innovation standards, Tamara also encourages the use of gender-inclusive language. As a key recommendation of the project, this call is supported by the publication of a vocabulary guide detailing the steps needed for implementing gender-inclusive language. This approach contributes to fostering a more inclusive and equitable environment in all aspects of communication and discourse.

In conclusion, Tamara’s role and involvement in various initiatives, projects, and partnerships highlight her dedication to promoting gender equality in the digital age. Her work in creating inclusive innovation ecosystems for women and girls, as well as her advocacy for gender-inclusive innovation standards and language, is crucial in breaking down barriers and creating a more equitable future.

Moderator

The Equals Coalition is a global partnership that aims to promote gender balance in the technology sector. It champions equality of access, skills, and leadership for both women and men. This coalition includes organizations such as KAIST, a leading research institution, and Professor Michael Best from the Georgia Institute of Technology who is influential in the fields of computing and global development. The coalition is actively seeking authors to contribute their writings to further their mission.

The Equals Global Partnership is embarking on a three-year project to create smart, sustainable, and inclusive innovation ecosystems for women and girls in social innovation and entrepreneurship. This project, co-led by GSMA and funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme, focuses on four main objectives: raising awareness of the gender gap, encouraging sustainable collaboration, involving young people in the design process, and creating better opportunities for women and girls.

The coalition also recommends a gender-inclusive innovation standard based on research and focus group discussions conducted in 22 countries. This standard aims to create an ecosystem that allows products and services to develop in a manner critical for sustainable development.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) places great importance on gender digital inclusion in digital policies. ITU Secretary General – Ms. Doreen Bogdan-Martin recognizes the significance of addressing gender inequality in digital policies. Consequently, a Handbook on mainstreaming gender in digital policies has been developed. The handbook includes successful gender-responsive policies, strategies, programs, and projects from around the world.

However, women still face challenges in benefiting from the digital revolution. These challenges include limited access to digital technologies, lack of digital skills, limited access to digital finance, and inadequate representation in digital leadership roles. The institutional setup for implementing gender-responsive policies does not differ significantly from other digital policies, highlighting the need for specific measures and government support to address gender equality in digital space.

Successful gender mainstreaming in digital policies requires efficient collaboration between governments, the private sector, and international organizations. Strong partnerships, based on good collaboration, are crucial for achieving the goals of gender equality in the digital realm.

KAIST and Georgia Tech are partnering on the eCourse vision, which focuses on gender equality as an essential element for achieving sustainable development goals. This collaborative effort aims to leverage the expertise of both institutions to drive progress in this area.

Additionally, the eCourse group publishes annual reports to document their work and progress. The most recent report, published in 2019 and authored by 53 individuals, discussed various themes such as assessment, leadership, and skills. The group is currently calling for authors to contribute to the upcoming annual report, providing an opportunity for individuals from different sectors to share their expertise.

Moon Choi, from KAIST, is interested in recruiting authors from the government, non-profit, and business sectors. The aim is to translate research findings into practical solutions and initiatives that will benefit women and girls in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship.

In conclusion, the Equals Coalition, along with partners such as KAIST and Professor Michael Best, is actively working towards promoting gender balance in the technology sector. Their efforts include initiatives such as the three-year project to create inclusive innovation ecosystems and the development of a gender-inclusive innovation standard. ITU prioritizes gender digital inclusion and has developed a handbook on mainstreaming gender in digital policies. However, challenges persist, and government support, collaboration, and gender-responsive policies are essential for achieving gender equality in the digital world.

Moderator:
But, you know, he loves Pokemon and Nintendo. Oh, yeah. Okay. Now that we are, we’ve reached 10 o’clock, we should start. My name is Dasom Lee. I’ll be moderating today’s session. I’m an assistant professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. And we have wonderful speakers today here with us online and in person. Before we officially start, I would like to do a quick introduction about the Equals Coalition. The Equals Coalition is a global partnership of organizations that aim to promote gender balance in the technology sector by championing equality of access, skills, and leadership for women and men alike. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, KAIST, is one of the leading research coalitions along with Georgia Tech in the U.S. And we are currently looking for the authors who wish to contribute their writings. So, if you’re interested, please talk to our organizers and the leader of the Equals Coalition here with us today. Our first speaker is with us on Zoom today. Professor Michael Best is the executive director of the Institute for People and Technology and professor with the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been one of the leading figures in computing and global development, and we are very happy that he’s here with us today on Zoom. So, can you hear us, Professor Best? I can. Wonderful. Am I coming in okay? You should be momentarily. Just give us one second. Do you hear me now? Yes. We can see you, and then we can hear you. Perfect. Okay. Awesome.

Michael Best:
Good morning to all you. Good evening from the United States where I am currently at 9 p.m. and just finished my dinner, and I’m a little saddened that I’m not joining you in person. I certainly wanted to come to Japan for IGF, but unfortunately it didn’t work for me. I was asked to just talk for five minutes, so this is going to be very fast, and I’m just going to give some reflections on my sense of the inaugural Equals Taking Stock Research Report. As Professor Lee mentioned, Equals is a global partnership for gender technology in a digital age, and their research coalition is currently ran by KAIST and Georgia Tech. But the research coalition, which is a unit or a division within the Equals Coalition Partnership, is an older organization that was founded around 2015, 2016. I founded it working with colleagues from the ITU, GSMA, UN Women, and other partner organizations when I was the founding director of the United Nations University Institute on Computing and Society. So at the time I had left Georgia Tech, I was on a leave of absence, and I was with the United Nations. And I was in long conversations with, in particular, people like Secretary General Doreen Bogdan of the ITU about ways in which we, as a global community, can think about the gender digital divide. And by that, I mostly mean the lack of leadership skills and access for women and girls to the internet and other digital systems. Though more broadly, I’m thinking about that in terms of broader concepts of gender and lack of access. So in 2017, I had the good fortune, while I was still with the United Nations, to bring on board as the leader of our gender technology lab at the UNU Computing and Society Institute a wonderful scholar named Dr. Ara Basay. She, unfortunately, is not able to meet us or join us right now because she actually has a competing meeting she’s having. But she joined me as my director for the gender technology lab. And we started talking about what it would mean to be a research coalition within the Equals Partnership and what it would mean for us to create a tent post research report that would synthesize the existing status of the gender digital divide and help to drive the conversation going forward. And so I, I think as is sort of my standard situation, had a completely unrealistic and somewhat idiotic vision for this report. And I put to Ara Basay something like, what if we do like the human development report but for digital gender issues? So we’ll have a complete global overview of the gender digital divide. We’ll create new indices. We’ll do a country by country review. And then we’ll do some sort of synthesis and analysis. And of course, my good friend Arba was like, are you kidding me? That’s ridiculous. Why are you not able to live in reality? And she instead, as the leader and ultimately the editor of this inaugural report, articulated an achievable, ambitious, and I think at the time but also in reflection, quite thrilling vision of a report that we could do in two years time that would begin to articulate a synthetic overview of gender digital divide issues. But would set the stage really for what should and hopefully still will be a ongoing research enterprise focused upon issues of women and girls, empowerment, leadership, and access to digital systems. And I should say that this sort of vision but also research enterprise, data-driven enterprise, was at the very founding interests of the Equals Global Partnership, including, and I remember this very clearly going back more than 10 years, including in the very kind of DNA articulated by Secretary General Bogdan of the ITU. She always, as did her ITU colleagues, some of which I think might have recorded interventions in this meeting or might even be there with you in Japan, made it very clear that driving by data, which to some degree means driving with research, is fundamental to our both consideration of a global gender digital divide but also our ability to respond to it. So in 2019, we released the Taking Stock Report. And I hope other interlocutors tonight or this morning will speak to this and that many of you in the room or online have read this report. But this report, edited by Arabesay and also by Nancy Hafkin and some other editorial committee members and contributed to by 53 researchers across the globe, in other words, a truly global enterprise with many, many contributions, really set the standard for what this kind of global synthetic report might look like. I want to take a second to pause and think about Nancy Hafkin. I’m not sure if she’s able to join us at IGF this year, but she really is the dean of gender and ICTs. She has published many of the seminal documents in this area. The Global Prize for Work in Gender and Digital Divide Issues is named the Hafkin Prize after Nancy Hafkin. She published her first research report on gender issues and digital divide in 1976. So I just want to appreciate somebody of that caliber serving as co-editor for our inaugural Equals Research Synthetic Report, along with Arabesay, who I think if she was here would immediately say that she is. Oh, I’m seeing a note. Am I to read this right now?

Moderator:
I’m afraid we are running out of time, so we do have to move on, Professor Besta. Are there any last comments that you wish to make? Oh, OK.

Michael Best:
I thought I had five minutes and I’ve taken six or seven. Is that right? Yes. No, I think I’m done. Thank you.

Moderator:
Thank you so much for your wonderful talk. Our second speaker is Tamara Dancheva, who is the Senior International Relations Manager with the Digital Gender Inclusion Task Force for the GSMA. She’s a member of the European Union delegation to the W20 Engagement Group of G20, and she has extensive experience in political party systems and democracy stemming from her previous roles as head of the Human Rights Programme for the Liberal International. Tamara has prepared a pre-recorded video for us. Yes, next one. Colleagues and delegates, it’s a pleasure to be with you here today, albeit virtually.

Tamara Dancheva:
My name is Tamara Dancheva and I represent the GSMA, which is the trade association representing the global mobile industry. I also happen to represent the Equals Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age as co-chair of the Equals Skills Coalition. So with those two hats on, I’m very pleased to be able to share with you some insights and key findings from a three-year project that GSMA had the privilege to co-lead as part of the Equals Global Partnership and as funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme. I think you’ll find the key findings and team for this project very fitting for the topic we are discussing today, which is empowering women in tech. The project is structured around a single impact area, and that is to create smart, sustainable, and inclusive innovation ecosystems by building capacity and expanding networks for women and girls in social innovation and entrepreneurship. It is anchored in the gendered innovations process and provides a key opportunity to fulfil EU member states declaration of commitment to women in the digital space. It has formulated a strategic and ambitious work programme to bridge the so-called valley of debt for girls and women in social innovation and entrepreneurship. As you can see from the graph on your screen, the project actually aims to bridge this particular gap. And of course, it has four main objectives. The first one is to raise awareness of the gender gap in innovation, both social innovation and, of course, entrepreneurship. The second goal is to encourage sustainable collaboration among public and private sectors. The third is to involve young people in the design of innovation ecosystems. And the fourth, of course, is to contribute to better opportunities for women and girls in the field, not least when it comes to education and jobs. The project is a three-year project due to be ending in December of this year. And as such, as we are near completion, it will be important to share with all of you what the findings from this three-year project delivered. And before I do that, I also want to emphasize that the project is as much about research as it is about capacity building. And I’ll speak to that in a second. The key policy recommendations that the project delivered looked into recommending a gender-inclusive innovation standard. This was done based on data delivered from research and focus group discussions conducted in 22 countries that actually revealed various factors are needed for an innovation-friendly environment. Therefore, what you see here on the slide represents the four key elements that need to be taken into consideration for gender-inclusive innovation ecosystems. The data that has fed into this scientific definition for a gender-inclusive innovation standard, and as well as, of course, the components of this definition that you see on the screen, have also all been unpacked with a gender-inclusive lens. And therefore, of course, at the core of this gender-inclusive innovation standard is gender-transformative innovations that go beyond just looking into the products and services themselves. It’s actually about ecosystem in which these products and services are allowed to develop in a way that is critical for sustainable development, and of course, critical in order to ensure that women and girls are put at the core of the innovation. I won’t have time to go into detail into each of these core components, but I’m happy to share the policy brief following my presentation. One particular attention I would like to draw here is, of course, the gender-inclusive language that is one of the key recommendations. And on the basis of that, we have also published a vocabulary of sorts that recommends, actually, what steps needs to be undertaken for gender-inclusive language to be implemented, and also, of course, how that is defined. Because, of course, definitions in this context are increasingly or crucially important. And of course, as you see in the last point, documenting and archiving the innovation performance is also critical, because that allows for assessments to take place and ensure that, indeed, the performance and the ideation processes are truly gender-inclusive. This is, again, a very brief, and perhaps not so brief, overview of the Equus EU project. I encourage all of you to visit the website, where you can find the plethora of other project outcomes and deliverables, and, of course, follow the project on social media. And if you type Equus EU in your Twitter or LinkedIn page, you’ll be able to locate those social media handles. Thank you so much, and I hope that this was of interest to all of you.

Moderator:
Thank you, Tamara, for the video and for the interesting discussion. Our third speaker, I’m moving on quickly so that we have a little more time for the Q&A later. Our third speaker is Jintali Sa, who is a strategy and policy coordinator at the ITU. She has worked for several UN organizations, such as UNESCO and UNDP, in the field of ICT and development related to policy and implementation issues at an international, regional, and national level. She is here with us in person. So please welcome Jintali.

Gitanjali Sah:
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here. On behalf of our Secretary General, Ms. Doreen Bogdan-Martin, as you all know that one of her main priorities is gender digital inclusion in all the work that we are doing in the area of digital policies. So today, I’m going to be talking about the handbook on mainstreaming gender in digital policies. And this handbook, we’ve been working with EIF and Equals, of course. And what’s the purpose of this handbook? Why have we created this handbook? So we all know that it’s very difficult for women all around the world to have equal access to participate in the benefits brought from the digital technology revolution. There are several opportunities that we have from the digital revolution. But how do women benefit from it? In order to be gender responsive, digital policies, strategies, programs, and projects need to consider the main challenges that prevent women to fully reap the benefits that these opportunities can provide, the opportunities that the digital economy can provide for all the women. Now, some of these challenges, like I mentioned, relate to women’s access to digital technologies, digital skills, digital finance, which is a very, very important topic. We’ve been hearing about it since day zero in IGF, entrepreneurship and leadership, infrastructure, and of course, digital services, which is really important access for women to have digital services. Now, we did a little research. And the handbooks that exist currently on gender mainstreaming, that they do not specifically target policymakers involved in the formulation of digital policies. Of course, there are a few exceptions. But we thought together. that this was a very important area that we need to focus on. Now, how was this handbook developed? So our country representatives, so ITU has 193 member states who are members of our organization, identified successful gender-responsive policies, strategies, programs, and projects that have been put in place by their respective governments. For example, in Africa, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Senegal, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, the Americas, Argentina, Barbados, and so on, you can see on the slides, Arab states, Asia, and the Pacific Commonwealth of Independent States, and Europe. So in total, we looked at 19 countries, and we gathered a pool of 27 such good practices, as we may call them, good policies, strategies, and programs which were identified by the countries. Now, we did this. Our headquarters are based in Geneva, Switzerland, but we do have six ITU regional offices. So we work closely with the ITU regional offices and member states to gather these strategies and policies. Now, these practices, like I said, good practices that we found, we gathered from the regional offices, they provide the basis for this handbook. So what were our main findings when we went through these handbooks, through these different practices? So we realized that there are good practices all over. They are in developed countries, in developing countries, and in least developing countries. There are some wonderful examples from all over the world. They all take a different shape. Of course, some are in the form of an activity. An activity could be a conversation with young girls on how to become scientists, how to study STEM. For example, in Guatemala, it could be a project. There are several projects in Zimbabwe, in the Murambinda community networks. Programs, they could take the shape of a program. A good example was an e-safety women program in Australia. It could be a strategy. Again, in Australia and Palestine, we found some good intersectoral gender strategies. An institution, basically gender centers. There was a good example in Argentina. Community networks, Silicon Mountain community in Cameroon, and so on and so forth. Now, factors behind a successful gender mainstreaming practices, there are multiple. We leave the slides behind, because my moderator just informed me I have only one minute left. You can have a look. And the handbook is actually available online as well. So what are the main findings? Again, government support practices by providing technology. For example, providing laptops, mobile phones, facilitating physical infrastructure, or by offering free internet. Secondly, all these partnerships are based on very good collaboration between governments, private sector, international organizations, and so on. Institutional setup for putting these gender responsive policies in place, they do not differ from other digital policies. So it’s not something absolutely new, the framework and the foundation. It is close to how other digital policies are made. The coordination mechanism around gender and digital policies, it serves to connect several ministries. So like I mentioned, we did discover that they are very intersectoral, because gender is a cross-cutting topic, and we do need it for everything. Gender inclusion is important for infrastructure, for security, for digital services, and so on so forth. So it is intersectoral. Just concluding, so three recommendations to mainstream gender and digital policies. We discovered was to include a specific objective to gender women or girls in national key strategic documents, the digital agendas, and so on so forth. Put in place projects or programs that specifically address women and girls. And thirdly, set a gender criteria for the assessment of project proposals. So it’s really important if there is a criteria which kind of forces you to make sure that gender inclusion is a priority in the project proposals. So just the next steps and how ITU, and in particular its development sector, can support members. So we do several national assessments of existing digital policies, and engagement and capacity development programs for policy makers which are continuous through our ITU regional offices, and the headquarters also, of course. So thank you very much, Ms. Moderator. The handbook is available online, like I mentioned. So please feel free to Google it and find it there, and I’m available for any questions. Thank you.

Moderator:
Thank you. Thank you so much. Now we have our last speaker, Professor Moon Choi, who’s an associate professor and the head of the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy at KAIST. Her work focuses on social welfare technology policy, and a research group focused on various digitally marginalized demographic groups such as the elderly, the women, and the refugees. She’s also one of the leaders of the eCourse Research Coalition, and if you have any questions about the eCourse, I suggest you talk to her after the session. Please welcome Professor Choi.

Moon Choi:
Okay, thank you so much for the introduction, and also thank you everyone for coming to this session, even it’s early morning. Okay, so KAIST is one of the co-leaders. We did a Georgia Tech, and I would like to discuss about what we are going to do for the next one year. Okay, so as the Professor Mike Bass mentioned that eCourse vision is about sustainable development goal, about number five, and about the gender equality, and I feel we all know that sustainable development goals cannot be achieved without gender equality, and eCourse cover the various multi-dimensions of gender inequality from the assess, skills, leadership, and so we tried to ensure practitioners and policy makers have intelligence they needed to make informed decision. In academia, we call evidence-based practice or evidence-based policies, and we found that collaboration and sharing information and collecting data together would be a very powerful drive and also tool to achieve our goals. So as a research coalition, we meet once a year. It’s called the annual meeting, and this year we had the Asia event on Sunday evening, and we had a very productive meeting and discussed about the next goal, and next goal is about the writing annual report, and we had the first report in 2019, and then next year will be the second one, but we tried harder to publish annually or biannually, and as Professor Mike Bass mentioned that the first report has about 53 authors, but this time we will have a smaller version because the first report covered the foundation knowledge, so now we are moving to the next step. So we have discussed what we are going to do for the annual report, and then we decided to have three themes following the structure of equals. It’s assess leadership skills. So we are going to announce a call for authors, and all of you in this room are invited, and there are two options. One is writing a chapter that’s between the 4,000 and 6,000 words, and then there’s another one. We know that there are many non-academia practitioners and policy makers, and you might want to share your good practice and good measurement or good policy initiative, so you can contribute to your case study. For example, the ITU has several initiative, and we can include that between 1,000 and 1,500 words. So the deadline for the statement of interest, that’s the title of the manuscript and also your name, and also two, three sentences about what it is about. That would be the December 1st, and we aim to publish this annual report next year, mid-October, and then we aim to have our annual meeting on that time, so annual meeting will be to celebrate the publication of annual report, and also we will discuss the next theme of the report of 2025 annual report. We probably hosted that annual meeting in Kaisa, South Korea, and then all the authors will be invited, and we will do our best to provide accommodation and meals, so author opportunities and also disseminate your, the practice would be a good way to work with our group. Okay, thank you so much.

Moderator:
Thank you so much, Professor Choi. We have 30 seconds left, actually 20, so I think we can take one question, and maybe we can focus on the Q&A after the session ends. Does anyone have a question? Okay, then, I guess we’re finishing two seconds early now, so thank you so much. Please.

Audience:
I was wondering if you also, in the part of leadership, does that relate to leadership of women’s businesses, or also to policymaking, because I have the feeling that there’s a lot going on in terms of digital skills and education, but how to make policymaking in itself more inclusive.

Moon Choi:
That’s a fantastic question. I forgot to mention that, so we are going to recruit the authors, all the three sectors, government, non-profit, and also the business sector, so in the leadership, the theme, we have really diverse authors working in the private sector, so one of the important messages from this annual report is how to translate the research findings into the practices, so the topic that you mentioned is perfectly fit to this annual report, so please submit your statement of interest, so we will consider that. Thank you so much.

Moderator:
Thank you so much for the question, and I would like to sincerely thank all the speakers that came here today, and the audience, and so thank you, and I hope you have a wonderful time in Japan. Thank you so much for coming.