| De: |
"Maja Andjelkovic" [ Profil ] |
| Sujet: |
On Behalf of Rania El Keiy, Egypt
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| Envoyé: |
Nov 17th, 2003 - 11:56:15 |
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On behalf of Rania El Keiy, I would like to share the following contribution from Egypt with you. Thanks for this very valuable discussion piece, Rania!
Maja
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From: Rania El Keiy, Egypt
Subject: The Present & Future of Women in ICT in Egypt
I have been a silent partner so far in the forum because there is nothing more I can add. The part I would like to really participate in is the part when we discuss tangible and realistic action plans that would really impact women and youth development. However there are some thoughts that I thought I could share with you
1. ICT is one of the few fields where both men and women compete on an equal footing - brains and not physical strength. Sometimes the barrier to ICT is created by women themselves, they just don't choose to get involved. But we can't really blame them. It is their lack of awareness that keeps them from being involved in ICT. The challenge here is work on creating this awareness. As you know, I work in the training & education field. A common question I am constantly asked from non IT people is to give them a course on General IT knowledge. What are the technologies out there? Who are the vendors? What are the substitutes for different technologies? A similar, yet simpler awareness workshop could be organized to create this awareness.
2. We all agreed the definition of ICT is the different communication media like radio, television, telephones, videoconferencing, computers & internet ....etc. Therefore, we can't say that women don't have access to ICT because Radio and Television are not gender specific and are accessible to everyone. What they don't have extensive access to is Information Technology. The audio and visual media has a very powerful penetration to the whole population of any nation. The challenge is to use the media that they have access to, to create awareness to use other ICT media.
3. A common mistake that people in my part of the world fall into is that they think that encouraging them to be involved in ICT or at least to get acquainted with it, and here I mean training, is to increase their employability chances ONLY, rather than improving the quality of their lives (I am attaching to you a document that has a real life case that I have been involved in and highlights how can ICT change someone's life). Therefore, in a lot of cases when women don't work either by choice (mostly house wives) or due to lack skills or even opportunities, they don't pursue any knowledge in the field of ICT. They don't understand that Computers and Internet have the power to radically transform lives by opening up new avenues of knowledge, information, work, entertainment and communication through the connectivity they provide to the world. They provide the tools to every individual to radically better the quality of life. In remote and underprivileged areas, this access women can have to the world can substitute for women lack of formal education. It can develop their personalities tremendously. They would have smaller families, they would learn how to raise their kids in a better way, and they would even learn how to maintain their houses. NIIT in India has implemented a wonderful initiative when they launched their famous global program on computer literacy. They have dedicated the month of March to women training on basic IT skills. They tailored the content of the course to suit non-career women, housewives and elderly women. The story that really touched me is the story of an 80 something woman whose kids have moved to the USA and she didn't have enough means to constantly be in touch with them. When she learnt how to use a computer and how to surf the net, she asked her trainer to teach how to use a chat program that has a videoconferencing option (although she didn't quite spell it like that) and she was introduced the MSN and was able to get in touch with her children and grandchildren on daily basis.
4. Now I don't know about all other parts of the world but I know that Egypt has taken very serious initiatives to encouraging & spreading ICT knowledge and access to every household. Among those initiatives are
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