Beijing+30 Regional Review Meeting, Palais des Nations, Geneva. October 2024.
Panel “Closing the gender gap: effective policies to deliver on SDGs in the ECE region”
Remarks delivered by Ms. Caitlin Kraft-Buchman, CEO and Founder of Women at the Table
Good afternoon, esteemed colleagues and fellow champions of gender equality,
The challenges we face—gender inequality, digital divides, climate change, and the undervaluation of care work—are deeply interconnected. We need a gender-transformative future that creates ecosystems that weave the digital, the green, and the care work transitions into an indivisible, interdependent framework.
Leveraging Digitalization with Intention and Inclusion
To create new opportunities and correct inequities, we must design digital initiatives with intention, purposefully crafting them to address and to rectify existing gender disparities. This means embedding inclusion at the core of our efforts, placing the needs and voices of women, girls, and marginalized groups at the center of technology design, development and deployment.
Key Actions for a Gender-Transformative Future
To accomplish this, first, we must use the public policy lever of gender-responsive public procurement to jumpstart new value creation. Public procurement is 14% of the EU GDP. That is approximately two trillion Euros. Utilizing public procurement policies for a small piece of that two trillion – to support and fund women-led businesses and startups, particularly in the digital tech and innovation sectors, will fuel a tsunami of invention from the world’s most underutilized intellectual resource – women and girls. Providing additional funding and support for women-led tech initiatives focused on addressing issues disproportionately affecting women will further incentivize the development of inclusive technologies.
This approach must also expand definitions of expertise, to recognize and value the insights and brilliance of those with social as well as technical experience, with lived experience, to enable affected communities not only to influence but conceive and direct the design, development, deployment, control and ownership of the technology they need.
Such transformative practices will not only stimulate economic growth but ensure that tech advances are relevant and beneficial to diverse populations.
Second, Governments have a pivotal role to play in reimagining and enhancing social services, and must use the power of the digital transition to reimagine how to connect more people, more women and girls to services, targeting support where women and girls have traditionally been left behind. Governments should be, and can be, in the forefront of funding and piloting pro social AI and ADM – designed with inclusion at the core – to pilot programs that directly address the needs of women, girls and marginalized groups, from reimagining pension schemes to creating services that take a life cycle approach in digital public infrastructure to the lives of women and girls.
We need to harness the capabilities of artificial intelligence to innovate social services . by reimagining connections and allocations of 21st-century social protections, incentives, subsidies, and scholarships, we can bridge gaps and foster equality.
Building capacity has to go beyond the traditional STEM training and STEM framing to STEAM
Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics , and elevate a socio technical approach to our definitions of capacity. We must close the gender gap in STE-A-M by offering targeted scholarships, mentorships, and career pathways for girls and women, especially those in marginalized communities. And most importantly conduct an urgent overhaul of tech, math and science curricula and teaching methods from K-12, and in universities to dismantle stereotypes, cultural norms and roles to encourage diverse participation in technology sectors.
We vigorously nod here to CEDAW’s new General Recommendation G.R. 40 on Equal and inclusive representation of women in decision-making systems to applaud the enactment of policies that require gender parity in leadership roles across technology companies, research institutions, and policy-making bodies for a just transition. Regular gender audits will help identify and eliminate some structural barriers hindering women’s advancement. and Inclusive policy development may help ensure that women’s voices are integral in shaping national and global digital policies.
Creating enabling environments for women’s full contribution and participation in the world of work is also imperative. This involves introducing supportive workplace policies, such as flexible work arrangements and access to affordable childcare to balance caregiving and leadership roles. We must enforce strict measures to protect against gender-based violence and harassment in the workplace, to create safe environments for women’s participation and success particularly in tech. This will include supporting and ratifying ILO’s Convention No. 190 (C190) the first international treaty to recognize the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment.
Adopting regulatory frameworks for gender equality in emerging technologies is another critical step. We have to insist on human rights impact assessments for AI and algorithmic decision-making systems to prevent the entry and perpetuation of discriminatory biases. – these systems based on old historical, exclusionary dats present a clear and present danger to our mutual work on gender equality.
Therefore, we must advocate for the construction of new, quality, unbiased datasets These are essential to any hope of gender equality going forward. We must advocate for organizations like the European Union through its mighty Horizon framework or the United Nations to spearhead the creation of comprehensive, unbiased datasets for public use. Ensuring that data includes women and all marginalized groups (and is disaggregated by age, geography ability … will provide a true reflection of society for equitable policy and decision-making.
Finally, we need to fund research on digitalization’s impact on women, girls and marginalized groups traditionally excluded from decision-making processes; utilizing these research findings to craft policies that enhance positive outcomes for these groups is vital.
Through these integrated actions, we can move women and historically marginalized populations from the peripheries to the center of technology creation and governance.
Feminists, the future of decision-making, the nexus of power and of control will increasingly be shaped by the technologies we create today. As Marshall McLuhan famously said, “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us”. This is our moment to invent the tools that will shape society. Tools that will shape our daughters and granddaughters and great granddaughters’ destinies. This is our moment to seize control of our own futures. These are our tools to create and use.
By weaving together the digital, the green, and care transitions, we can construct an ecosystem that uplifts all members of society. We must commit to ensuring that women are not only #equal users of technology but #equal architects of the digital world.
Thank you.
Last modified: October 25, 2024