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Role of Women in ICT for Development
In recent years there has been a major thrust in the effort to get women involved in ICT for personal, gender and financial empowerment. In May 29 at the "International Girls in ICT Day 2012" held in Geneva, Swizerland, the ITU's Secretary General Dr. Hamadoun Touré gave a more compelling reason - “Technology needs girls for all sorts of reasons – but perhaps the most important one is that women drive social and economic growth.

In 2009, Insight's in-depth look at the disparity in which girls and boys view ICT as a career in Europe explain, to a certain extent, why the gender gap exists in favor of men over women. Reasons do vary from one country to the next but the one constant is that women perceive ICT to be a male-dominated industry making it less appealing as a career choice. In general, women are still vastly outnumbered in high-level ICT positions worlwide save for countries like India that have been actively involved in ICT much earlier than other countries but examples like this is far and few between. But changes are currently being made from the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Pacific and Russia to change the perspective of girls at the primary educational level regarding the feasibility of ICT as a long-term and fruitful career.

A study made by ITU shows that narrowing the gap between men and women in the workplace increases economic growth while fighting to maintain the gap costs billions of dollars a year. Plus, a more diverse gender pool in the workplace makes for a more robust and healthy business environment. Aside from the obvious benefits of ICT implementation by involving women in the workplace, it is a very positive move from a social standpoint to close the gender gap in all aspects of society.

Countries in Africa have taken the initiative and have shown a variety of basic ways of using ICT in improving their way of life. It can be as simple as using video and photos for better marketing of basic goods to the use of cellular services for more up-to-date information on current practices.

The ITU in cooperation with Sookmyung Women's University of Korea and the Asia Pacific Information Network Center recently funded ICT pilot programs in the Philippines and Bhutan specifically targeting rural women to see how feasible it is and the effects it had on the respective communities. The program shows that women tend to adapt much quicker to the use of ICT once exposed to it and partcipants, though initailly averse to the idea of using ICT for information gathering and marketing, find the benefits of ICT application in their local setting.