E-Agriculture

Focus on Rural Women, Girls and ICTs

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Focus on Rural Women, Girls and ICTs

 

The month of March is significant for women in the context of sustainable development in agriculture.

Firstly, because the 8th of March is the International Women’s Day (IWD), which is dedicated yearly to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. This day also is remembered to mark the call to action for accelerating gender parity.

Secondly, in celebrating the IWD, the Rome-based agencies (RBAs) – FAO, IFAD and WFP have chosen theme, “Linked-in: empowering rural women and girls through media and ICTs”. This event will focus ‘on the integration of ICT and media in rural development strategies for the benefit of women and girls, identifying synergies and positive results stemming from the activities of the RBAs’ Read more here.

The event will see the launch of a new publication on Gender and ICTs, Read more here 

Thirdly, the 62nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women will coincidentally take place at the United Nation Headquarters in New York from the 12th to the 23rd of March 2018. The review theme of this event is ‘participation in and access of women to the media, and information and communications technologies and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women’.

These events will retrace, amongst many other indicators, the role of ICTs in empowering rural women and girls and how these technologies accelerate gender parity.

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action; the CSW47 Agreed Conclusions, and other efforts culminated to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The latter expresses the achievements for rural women, girls and gender equality specifically via the Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2, 5 and 17.

The CSW47 Agreed conclusions were published in 2003 and the SDG 5 focuses on Gender Equality. The agreed outcomes are a very exhaustive list of how ICTs can be used to empower rural women and also focused on prevention and combating the adverse impact of the digital revolution on gender equality.

Agreed conclusion 4(a) to (x) states policy and practical directions to specialized agencies, governments, civil societies and private sector were given to the use of ICTs as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women. Read the full agreed conclusions here

Reference list on empowering women, girls and ICTS
e-Agriculture resources

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