3 things are here to stay: Women, the Internet and human rights
By Claudia Calvin
Yahoo Business & Human Rights Program, Friday, September 28th, 2012
Change Your World (Cambia Tu Mundo), Yahoo!’s Business & Human Rights Summit that took place on September 12th and 13th in Mexico City is an excellent example of what I mean. For a day and a half, women from different countries, backgrounds and experiences in Latin America shared their dreams, lives, challenges and proved that new technologies and the Internet are incomparable tools of empowerment.
I won´t go over the event’s program nor the participants. (Links to them are available here and here). What I want to do is highlight the wonderful lessons I learned after participating in Change Your World.
1. Women are a driving force towards equality in the world. Yes, women represent not only 50% of the world population, they represent half of the idea and proposal creators. Many don´t know it, but new technologies can help them be heard and allow their proposals and ideas to be included in the development and prosperity of their communities, countries…. and therefore… of the planet.
2. Digital literacy of women in Latin America must be considered a priority for policy makers. Even though Spanish is the third most important language on the Internet with 182,379,220 users, there is lack of content created and written in it. If you add the lack of women´s voices as content creators in the region, the figures are worrisome. We cannot allow nor permit the addition of this marginalization to the many other kinds of marginalization women face (education, health, financial, justice and so on).
3. Women and the Internet can be a creative explosion. Throughout the sessions one thing was absolutely clear: the participants demonstrated in various and creative ways how the Internet can be used to support not only good causes, but very practical economic, social and political outcomes. The Internet can be a democratization tool to help build and consolidate new realities where women´s interests and needs can be not only expressed but included.
Phi Beta Iota: Women are without question the root of the force, and educated women, and connected women, stronger still. There are stellar men as change-agents, but as a demographic, our focus at Phi Beta Iota is on women and the young — the Middle Schoolers who will be voting in 2016.
See Also:
Review: Designing a World that Works For All: Solutions & Strategies for Meeting the World’s Needs
Review: Empowering Public Wisdom – A Practical Vision of Citizen-Led Politics
Review: The Code for Global Ethics: Ten Humanist Principles
Review (Fiction): Truce – The Day the World Was Perfect
Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive Future-Oriented)
