UNITED NTIONS, Mar 09 (APP): With the world celebrating International Women’s Day on Wednesday, ministers from several countries, including Pakistan, underscored the need to strengthen women and girls’ inclusion in innovation and technology, close the digital gender divide and address digital violence as the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) continued its 67th session.
The session, which runs from March 6 to 17 March, is focused on the theme “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls”.
As the Commission continued its general discussion, speakers spotlighted their States’ strides and successes for women and girls, while others called for stepped-up efforts, especially technology, digital accessibility and safety.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said his country elected the first Muslim woman of any Muslim nation in 1988. His mother, Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, represented Pakistan at the Fourth Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.
FM Bilawal said It falls upon all women and men of the Muslim world to counter the violations of Islamic principles that diminish the role of women in Muslim society and to advance the cause of women’s empowerment so boldly espoused by his mother and many other Muslim leaders.The “Women in Islam” conference convened by Pakistan was an effort in that direction.
Women’s rights are Islamic rights and Islamic rights enshrine women’s rights, the foreign minister underscored.
In the digital age, he said equal access to and use of the Internet is a critical enabler of sustainable and inclusive development. However, the digital divide among and within countries continues to widen, with one third of the global population still offline, he said, calling on the international community to harness the potential of technology in advancing its shared goals.
“The global South has been the most affected by this growing divide with uneven impact on women and girls,” the foreign minister said, pointing out that the economic and human rights cost of this disturbing fact was huge, as most recently evident during the COVID pandemic.
“These challenges which Pakistan and other developing countries confront are function of poverty, underdevelopment and resource constraints,” FM Bilawal said.
At the same time, he aid, digital technologies provide the most promising tools to uplift women and girls. “It is therefore upon us to harness the potential of these technologies in advancing our shared goals.”
Many attendees in the iconic General Assembly hall where CSW is meeting wore suits, scarves or other items of clothing in shades that spanned from periwinkle to indigo, in tribute to women working in tech, a sector that remains overwhelmingly male.
“I see this room seldom so packed and so full of energy. It is a clear indication of the noble goals that we are all celebrating and representing today,” Assembly President Csaba Korosi said in his opening address.
In joining the call for greater gender inclusion in tech and innovation, Korosi highlighted the connection to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which provide the blueprint to a just and equitable future by 2030.
He said that by mid-century, 75 per cent of jobs will be related to science, technology, engineering or maths (STEM). However, women comprise just 30 per cent of the workforce in the 20 largest global tech companies in the world today.
The Assembly president stressed the need to intensify global efforts to achieve SDG 5 on gender equality “and to unshackle the underused potential of the half of humanity.”