 Wnaw, te pñiniona, i kakiapalu. Pa punhari ni i te pjitaot 경lipa. Pela meneisai kizumai buncha pawt gindiaith bom be zoko wa meneisai sikon beti tarei i hu並ruption i97 era amount Pai  feminine recessrepo nair kaat i panchaikAy terepanta i kapl내 Pai p頑ugia tanya i negative Tanei wai ako puka paba mafidontohartu m orenake natanei umi iakatawera i siadu, IDR, WSEcw i PPanawad Cleanわ w argumentu wahan iisau me briefa mumwara gawotedosates I was in Mexico City this week for the launch of the Human Development Report, 2013, the President of Mexico himself presided at the launch. The report is on the rise of the south, and it's looking at the emergence and transformation of fast-moving developing countries. One of the key tools, of course, is connectivity, ICT innovation in development, and the report most certainly comments on areas which are very relevant to the work of the broadband commission, and with respect to gender, identifies gender inequality as one of the ceilings which countries are hitting in trying to take their development forward. If you exclude half the world's population from the full potential of their country's development, of course, you will never reach a full national potential. I recommend it available online at HDR.UNDP.org to everyone when you have a spare moment. So it was back in September last year at the broadband commission meeting that Gina Davis challenged the commission, and when Gina challenges you, you sit up and take notice. And Gina said, please broadband commission, set up a working group on gender, look at the gender gap in access to ICTs and broadband, and Gina, of course, has also done wonderful work looking at the stereotyping and less than positive images of women, often portrayed in media, and is also very keen to see women and girls going into careers in technology. So the idea was, get this group going and let's see where we can take gender equality forward in ICTs. Now, of course, we immediately run up against the broader issues around gender equality, but in a world where ICTs empower, as Dr Sano has so aptly said, to deny the opportunity of equal access to ICTs to women and girls, of course, stands in the way of their empowerment in reaching gender equality, let alone, as I said, of their countries reaching their full potential. So this working group, with all the knowledge that it has, as ITU has said, has the opportunity to identify some of the innovative strategies which might see ICTs more effectively harnessed in support of women's empowerment and gender equality, and I truly believe, as I know you all do, that ICTs can help transform the lives of women and their families and be catalytic for development. And in the UN Development Program, being very practical people, we're always looking for what are the practical aids that these technologies can be in development. Now, everyone here is very familiar with all the facts and figures around ICTs, that they have become indispensable tools for participation in modern society and economies. That's why the gender gap matters so much. If 21% fewer women own mobile phones than men do, they are put at a disadvantage in today's world. And of course, the figures of the disparities there are rather larger than that average for developing countries reaching a 37% gap in South Asia, for example, quite a serious gap. Now, the growth in smartphones, as we all know, is exponential, giving connectivity to the web. We all want women to be able to ride the wave of the smartphone expansion and roll out too. Again, we understand that in developing countries around a quarter fewer women have access to the internet. And in sub-Saharan Africa, that gap increases to about 45%. This is a serious gap. Why does it matter? Well, for all the reasons, this very well-informed group is so familiar with. ICTs enable people to have voice to participate, to have more impact on the decisions which impact their lives. ICTs give access to vital and essential services and information. ICTs can economically empower, ICTs can increase social interaction. And we have many examples and development across all these aspects of ICT empowerment, whether it is the work of UN women in Ecuador to train rural women leaders to use ICTs to access information, request forms and submit projects to their governments, enabling them then to get concrete improvements in their lives through better sanitation, housing and drinking water and lift their profile as leaders in their communities. We've seen the impact for women of ICTs on addressing maternal health. Look no further than Uganda, where personal digital assistance are supporting rural healthcare workers via the local cell phone network to get access to health information and data collection and analysis. So many examples from the economic empowerment area go no further than Kenya with Mpeso, which everyone is so familiar with, and the mobile banking and financing, opening up new opportunities for women entrepreneurs. And what a difference it makes not to have to carry sizeable sums of money in situations which are not always safe. Inclusive finance through mobile banking has huge advantages in many ways. And then we are also seeing the potential to work for more food security and better nutrition through the messaging and information delivery through ICTs in developing countries. So we all see these opportunities, we see the implications. We see the feedback from women themselves. One survey showing four in 10 women in low and middle-income developing countries saying, yes, we have had increased economic or professional opportunities because we owned a mobile phone. Very important finding. So as we go about our work, let's be mindful of some of the long-standing inequalities which are standing in the way, because we have to then have strategies which are going to also work our way through these barriers. The attitudes, for example, in a number of societies which are not conducive to women owning and operating productive assets, women's lack of control over financial resources or even their own mobility in a number of societies, constraints on personal security in many places, the burden of unpaid care work for women and unequal access to education. This is the context for many of the people in this digital divide at the current time. Meaning, for example, opening a public access technology centre won't help women if the hours of operation are too late for women to travel there safely or if women don't feel comfortable using a centre because the staff are only men or there are no designated bathrooms for the women. We have to think very practically around these issues. Now, in development, we very much see ICT rollout as a means to an end. We see the importance of going beyond closing the digital divide to closing the service and the information divide as well. We think the deployment and rollout of ICTs needs to be linked to the real challenges faced on the ground, and this working group is focusing on the challenges for women. We need rollout of the technologies, but we need rollout with equity of access and access to services. In development of the UN, we talk about MDGs with equity. I think this working group is focused on broadband with equity for women.