 This is Excellencies, dear colleagues, friends, good afternoon, and happy International Women's Day. Let me start by thanking Cameroon's Minister of Post and Telecommunications, Minette Ribon-Lilicon, and Australia's Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Amanda Goree, for being here with us today. I'm very pleased to open this second Women in Sanitation Expert Group-wise event. It gives us the chance to recognize those individuals, organizations, and administrations that have spared no effort in ensuring gender equality in ITU's standardization work. I want to congratulate the Chair and Vice-Chair of WISE, Dr. Rim Berhasin-Sheriff of Tunisia Telecom, and Dr. Yongjun Kim, President of Korea's Energy Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute. I was told that women's participation at the WTSA this time was just about 30 percent this year. It is an improvement on the previous WTSA, but we needed to do better, a lot better. I count on WISE to continue to play an important role in encouraging the active participation of women in the activities and leadership roles of ITU's telecommunications standardization sector. But development and radio communication sectors are engaged in the same effort through the launch of a network of women for this year's WTDC and next year WRC 2023. I'm grateful for these efforts, and I call on everyone to make women's active participation in ITU activities and conferences and organization-wide effort at PP 2022. I have honor to see our Chairman of PP 2022 here with us. I think that we should keep this promise. This will be the first time that we try to mainstream a gender perspective in the rural outskirts of this conference, and this is a priority for ITU. Our goal for PP 2022 is to have at least 35 percent of women among delegates improving on what was achieved four years ago at PP 2018. Unfortunately, this is not depending on the Chairman himself, not depending on Secretary General of ITU neither. It will be a collective effort from everybody of us. If I may, I still want to remember one issue that at the previous WRC, we had our radio assembly, and that radio assembly had received proposals from different regions for the vice chairman of radio assembly, but unfortunately at that moment, we did not have any lady vice chairman, if my memory is correct. Then we tried to encourage our regional coordinator to help us if we can have some lady candidate be nominated as the representative of the regions, unfortunately finally we did not. So that is something I found is pitting. So what I am saying that we really count on our members, count on our regional coordinators, try to encourage the presentation of candidate from ladies experts to join us for the leadership. Of course, last WRC, we did have very good improvement of women participation. If my memory is correct, that in 2012 WRC, we had around 12 percent of women participants, while in 2019, we had about 18 percent, so that is 50 percent more, but compared with this time, WTSA, 18 percent compared with 30 percent, you don't need me to tell the difference. While from 30 percent to 35 percent in couple of months, that will be also something we need to work hard. So I encourage all of you to help us to bring more women experts to our conferences, to present more women candidates for leadership positions. This brings me to the grant agreement that I am about to sign with the Government of Australia. Thanks to Australia's generous support, today's agreement will help set new benchmarks for women's representation at PP 2022. It will help raise women's voice in our decision-making process and advocate for women's leadership roles at PP 2022 and beyond. I heard someone in Paris why I had this clear percentage of information in my mind, that because I'm an international gender champion, and I always keep these things in my mind. And last night, I joined the Geneva-based international gender champion reception hosted by our American ambassador, so that we renewed this kind of information. And at that meeting, we heard also that situation in Geneva-based UN agencies is not that kind of satisfactory to us, that we need really to work hard. So as the UN Secretary General said, UN Secretary General, it's not the ITU Secretary General, the UN Secretary General said, when women are missing from decision-making, we see the world through only one perspective. On this day, let's encourage the active and meaningful participation of women in all our activities and conferences, so that we can see the world through all perspectives. Let's recognize women's achievements, the challenges they face, and the actions we can take all of us together to advance gender equality globally. Thank you again to Australia for this support. I hope others will follow this example and join us in breaking down gender barrier within and outside ITU. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Zhao, for those insightful remarks. I would now like to invite Ambassador Mrs. Amanda Gurley, permanent representative of Australia, to deliver her keynote address. The floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much. Secretary General, Honourable Minister from Cameroon, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. It's a great pleasure to be here on International Women's Day to launch with the ITU this training program to bolster the participation of women delegates in the ITU plenipotentiary. We're doing this because boosting the role of women in ITU deliberations is the right thing to do. But it's also the sensible thing to do to improve policy outcomes. At the 2018 plenipotentiary, I hear only 28% of delegates were women. And we are determined to improve this. Clearly, if women aren't present from the outset, then their perspectives and needs are unlikely to be represented properly in the outcomes. If women are not equal participants in the conversation, how can we deliver on the sustainable development goals and fully and equally realise the opportunities afforded by technology? How can we influence ICT policy and standards development to deliver increased accessibility and meaningful connectivity? How can we ensure safe access to technology, which reflects the particular vulnerability of women and girls? And how can we ensure that AI systems don't magnify gender and racial biases and that technology is designed for female physiques and voices? We are all familiar with the refrain, if you can't see it, you can't be it. And this is evident in all walks of life. But I think in STEM it stands out for special mention. In Australia, our situation is not dissimilar to many other countries, with the number of women in STEM qualified occupations at just 13%. Australia is determined to change this and to break down existing barriers and address structural and cultural biases that stand in the way of girls and women studying STEM subjects and excelling in the careers that follow. In 2018 we appointed the first women in STEM ambassador, Professor Lisa Harvey Smith, who is mobilising Australia's business leaders, educators and policy makers to increase the participation of women and girls in STEM studies and careers. And while it's a long road ahead, the proportion of women studying STEM at universities is on the increase, making up to 36% of enrolments at universities in 2021. And I'm pleased to say my daughter is one of them. We are also supporting women in STEM through our development program. For example, in our region we are assisting mid-career women in the internet industry to build their network engineering and management skills. I welcome the ITU's adoption of gender equality and mainstreaming policies which promote gender equality initiatives through its sectors. This is a valuable step, but important work remains for all of us. When considering the composition of our ITU delegations and roles of individuals, we must ensure that the valuable and essential contribution of women is front of mind. I'm pleased to say that more than half of Australia's delegation to the current WTSA are women, but I know this doesn't tell the whole story, and participation goes beyond just numerical representation. It is about the extent to which women have the skills, confidence and empowerment to actively engage and influence outcomes and to take on roles like vice-chairs in the future. This training initiative is designed to achieve this, to improve the capacity of women delegates to participate in negotiations and advocacy, including in subject specific sessions. We hope you will offer your whole hearted support by nominating delegates to attend the training course. The first gender responsive plenipotentiary in Bucharest in September provides us with an opportunity to measure our progress. The onus is on us to foster a growing cohort of women delegates representing their countries, taking the floor, advocating, negotiating, taking the lead. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mrs. Ambassador Gurley, for those inspiring words. We will now proceed with the signing ceremony of the agreement between Australia and the International Telecommunication Union. First, your ITU council, as mentioned by the ambassador of Australia, decided in the plenipotentiary conference to take place in Bucharest, Romania, from 26 September to 14 October 2022, be a gender responsive event. Subsequently, Australia reached out to ITU with a proposal to contribute to increasing the participation of women delegates during the conference and also to strengthen the work on closing the gender digital divide. Today, on Women's International Day, the government of Australia and ITU will sign a memorandum of understanding to enhance the capacity of women delegates to participate effectively in the plenipotentiary conference. I am pleased to announce that Australia, as mentioned, will be funding, training, delivered through the ITU Academy platform to support women delegates attending PP22 and sponsor a networking event to take place in Bucharest. May I invite... Thank you. Congratulations on the signing of this MOU and best wishes for a fruitful collaboration. Thank you. I will now give the floor to Mr Sabin Sarmas, chairman designated of plenipotentiary conference Bucharest 2022 to say a few words. Mr Sabin, please. Mr Secretary-General, Madam Ambassador, distinguished guests, first just allow me to wish a happy International Women's Day to all the ladies present here. Maybe we are not doing this too often or as often as we should, but we, men, thank you, all of you, for your do-it approach and for the grace you are solving all the challenges you are facing each day. Thank you for this. Beside this, I think that I would like to say that events or organizing events like this one are extremely important things that are done by countries that are leading, as you are doing, and I saw a lot in your speech, that you are leading this process of creating gender equality in your country, in the ITU community, in the world in general. So congratulations for that and thank you for having such an event and for inviting us here today. We have spent maybe too many years speaking about gender equality and maybe not taking as much action as we do, so I think that real measurements have to be taken today and every day that follows, I don't know, the events like one we are having here today. That's why, as I said, wise initiative and signing this agreement today is very important and congratulations again for having this event. Training women to be ready for the challenges of IT and C. It's a valuable thing for the future of industry. We are facing today very rapidly word-of-word changes. It's something that we never faced before. The way that the new jobs are creating, it's evolving extremely fast and we need to be ready for this. And I think the woman inclusion in this sector is a key for sustainable economic growth in the end if we are going deeper in the subject. Furthermore, I think that it's extremely important not only to solve existing problems of the gender inequality, but also to set the ground for a series of strategies that are meant to empower and to offer them the appropriate skill and tools which are more and more digital today and to help them strengthen their position as decision-making in the communication and workplace, in the community, sorry, and workplaces. I'm thus very confident that the woman expertise will pay a crucial role in ITO activity and, of course, in upcoming planning potential conference that remain exhausting and where are more the welcome next year. As the designate chairman of the PP, it's both my pleasure and my goal to encourage, to have a delegation to be gender-balanced. Maybe some of you had the chance to meet my team at the cell that I'm trying to read by example here, and I think I'm pretty successful in this. And besides this training and courtesy to the Australian delegation, the host country, Romania, has prepared a series of gender equality focus events, which will be an excellent opportunity to promote gender equality, far to advocate for woman leadership in the roles of telecommunication industry. So thank you very much for this again, and good luck with your project and hope it's going to be a very successful side event of our PP in Romania. Thank you again. Thank you very much, Mr. Salmas, for your excellent speech. I hope that the planning potential conference in Bucharest will be very successful and will produce fruitful outcomes. Moving on the next agenda item, I would now like to invite Dr. Cisabli, the director of the Standardization Bureau of the ITU, to give us his opening remarks. The floor is yours. Thank you. Very good afternoon. Excellency ministers, ambassadors, Secretary-General, fellow elected officers, let me say welcome and congratulations of International Women's Day. Still in this floor, some of you need a gender balance. I hope that ITU, as an international organization, we are really strive to the most inclusive organization for the gender equality. We are strive to have an inclusivity as much as possible. Inclusivity does not mean only developed or developing reasons, so at this reason, that reason, all geographical reasons, including women's and all genders. By nature, technical standard is not gender-biased, but we are a little bit worried about. Current standard might be, because many of the technical standards developed by the male side, male attendance, so we may possibly, something missing, our technical standard may be not proper in terms of this, supporting of this gender equality. So we are looking for that. So ITU, we are looking for that as one of our subjects. We just started, but we try to look out of this. Our current recommendation is enough to support gender equality. Definitely our future subject should be included of that. I have been informed of this last study period. We have a women participation is 17%, but now, this study period, we have 27%. The Secretary General informed us, WTSA is 30%. So I'm very hope to the next study period should be over 30, 35% to reach real gender equality. I have this, especially our Excellency, this ambassador indicate about AI, machine learning, there might be certain bias, should not be biased, I'm very happy we have a keynote speech after me, or this, after this Excellency of this Minister, we have a keynote speech about new algorithmic divide delivered by Professor Anya Susala. I thank of this Professor Anya Susala. This is a subject how we can ensure AI algorithms be balanced. So I hope this will be interesting subject for us, how we get reminded of this issue, that could be subject to our continuous development through this ITU in terms of this technical standard. I conclude, I wish to conclude as my thanks to Chairman, Madam Lim, she already stay with us more than 10 years, now became of this one of study group by chair, is her activity is expanded to the regional group in Africa, and also my thanks to Mr. Kim, as I participate as a mayor side, how we can contribute to this gender equality. Thank you very much, I wish you have a great event. Thank you, thank you very much Dr. Lee for your inspiring remarks. We are very privileged to also have in our mid-set her excellency, Mrs. Minette Libom Lee Likeng, the Minister of Post and Telecommunication of Cameroon, who will also give us some few remarks. Your excellency, the floor is yours, thank you. Thank you very much for recognize me. Let me first of all thank the Secretary General of the ITU for inviting me to take part in this important table discussion on ICT development and gender issues in standardization. I believe that more than even before, stakeholders need to integrate gender perspective into their various ICT strategies in order to speed up progress towards gender equality. In development economies, inclusive of Cameroon, there is clear evidence of gender inequality with regard to access and production of ICT services, largely associated to cultural norms that are discriminatory towards girls and women, as well we lack of women within the circles where ICT's issues are designed and controlled particularly at policy levels. In our communities, low literacy and skill levels, poverty and lack of affordability or access to services and cultural norms that borrow women from having access to electronic communication have been identified as a main factor that inhibits women and girls from playing key roles in ICT development. Consequently, governments should start by working to overcome these obstacles through appropriate policy initiatives in order to ensure equitable gender access. In Cameroon, the role of women in economic development is largely celebrated and donated in a gender policy document which informs government actions in line with the heads of state's vision for the promotion of the status of women and the construction of an exemplary republic based on the equal rights of citizens of both sexes. As far as the telecommunication sector is concerned, the following initiatives have been undertaken to encourage women and young girls in the fields of ICT. Encourage the ownership of ICT access devices by women and girls, support female entrepreneurship and women startups. Encourage a tech of training courses in the field of ICT. Mandate the issues we use of ICT resources including social media platforms to fight against all forms of violence and discrimination against women including head speech, hudicalization and bullying. Provide scholarship award for academic excellence to girls and undertake concrete initiatives to establish a genuine and gender-balanced ecosystem for the development of digital companies and access to ICT jobs. Standardization has played and will continue to play a critical role in the development of telecommunication globally. Despite being highly technical and men-dominated, I believe that if women are given the chance and right opportunities, they will contribute significantly. Recruitment into a standardization bureau and related industry bodies must take into consideration gender-specific issues. Before the validation of standards, it is important to ensure that each standard is gender-responsive. The voice of a woman must not only be championed by women, I'm hereby appalling to all the men within the standardization ecosystem to stand up for the women when formulating and implementing standards. To the few women who are already in standard organization, I invite you to work even harder, to mentor upcoming female talents and above all, to ensure that your voices are heard and deleted in every future standard. It is also important to ensure that both women and men participating in standard-setting processes are adequately resourced to consider both the basic needs and the long-term motive of all gender in the era of standardization in which they operate. For us, at the Ministry of ICTs in Cameroon, we have embedded gender-specific initiatives in all our programs, such as the appointment of women into positions of authority and the integration of women in the elaboration of key policy documents which are all in line with the directive of the heads of state. We are also working with our international partners to found gender initiatives in all our projects. Our motto is that no one will be left behind, not a boy child and not even the girl child. Thank you very much for your kind attention. Thank you very much, Your Excellency, for your enriching remarks. I would now like to invite Professor Anjana Sousarla to give us a keynote speech on the new algorithmic divide, understanding gender bias and fairness with artificial intelligence. Professor Anjana Sousarla will participate remotely. Just to introduce Professor Anjana Sousarla, she's the Omura Saxena Professor of Responsible AI at the Elly Board College of Business at Michigan State University. Her research, interested, includes the economics of information systems, social media analytics, and the economics of artificial intelligence. Professor Sousarla, the floor is yours. You have 10 minutes for your presentation. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm so delighted to be able to speak to you, although remote. So traditionally, I think most of you have heard the term, the digital divide. There is a gap between those who could access computers on the internet and those who could not. Now, with algorithms controlling almost every part of our lives, there is likewise an algorithmic divide. And today, I want to talk a little bit about how gender inequities can be magnified or accentuated by the algorithmic divide. I want to talk a little bit about how to ensure fairness and gender equity with AI and what are the role that standards can play in greater inclusion. So what is really causing the algorithmic divide? It's really because we are increasingly physical and virtual, are merging. There is a ubiquity of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics. And AI that used to be used for more automation type tasks is being used increasingly for higher order reasoning and perception. That means every aspect of our life, what route we take in our morning commute to more complex legal and judicial matters, such as predictive policing or credit lending, et cetera, everything is controlled by algorithms. That means that we are increasingly defining and recognizing people, objects, and connections through the lens of predictive algorithms. So algorithms take in data, they fit them to a mathematical model, and put out a prediction. Doesn't matter what songs you enjoy, or it could be how many years someone should spend in jail. So the models are developed and tweaked based on past data. So what that means is that the assumptions and biases underlying algorithms affect our broader participation in economics activity and in society. And a number of speakers have already alluded to that in the past few minutes. So what is contributing to gender inequities in the age of the algorithmic divide? First, as some of you have already mentioned, AI, the growth of AI is typically taking place in areas such as engineering, where they're traditionally not that many women. Also, roles typically fueled by women, such as administrative and customer service roles, are being automated away by new technologies. And so the talent base of women can be very small in the higher paying, higher remunerative jobs, and in the jobs that call for design thinking when it comes to artificial intelligence. The other thing that's happening is AI is shaping the future of work in a way that could be adverse to gender inequality. Because the jobs that could be hardest to automate can be caregiving roles, such as ones that require looking after children or elderly care. But those, again, may be very racialized and gendered in a way that does not help the people doing those jobs to share from the gains in society in an equitable manner. And the third is the idea of data deserts. Girls and women have less access to technology and the internet. So a lot of AI systems may be used unthinkingly, they are unthinkingly created without taking the lives of women into consideration. And there's a lot of data deserts. There's just not enough data about how women are using in technology and participating in economics. So what do we do? Can we, how do we understand fairness and bias? First, we need an understanding that there is such a thing as algorithmic harms. To understand gender biases in AI, we only have to look at digital assistants, whether it's Alexa or Siri. Almost all voice assistants are given female names and express personalities that are engineered to be uniformly subservient. A UNESCO report on gender inequality and AI explains that these biases are rooted in stark gender imbalances in digital skills education and exacerbated by the gender imbalances of teams that are developing these AI tools. So what can we do? To implement AI in an equitable, trustworthy, and transparent manner, we need mechanisms to correct for biases. Individuals, firms, governments, and standard setting bodies should be actively aware of how AI reinforces biases, create curriculum, look for partnerships between citizens and standard-making bodies. And I will talk a little bit about some of these. Algorithmic harms, a very famous example, at least in the United States, is that of a couple who both applied for Apple credit cards. They make the same, more or less same income. And they live in a common property state of California. Wife has given a credit limit of little less than half of what her husband was given. And similarly, another example, an audit of an AI tool used for lending basically revealed that almost all approved loans were for male borrowers, reflecting the fact that loan officers historically favored male applicants. So algorithmic governance posts differential costs to different groups. Using AI and mortgage passing may be efficient for a firm, for a bank. But in the process, is AI placing undue burdens on different groups of individuals? So we need to quantify what would be algorithmic harm from an individual perspective and a societal perspective, like differential access to job opportunities, differential access to health equity or education equity, et cetera. And to build gender-smart AI, to advance gender equity, we need to first recognize that there are different algorithmic harms. And we need to connect those algorithmic harms to gender equity outcomes that we want to see in society. So to understand standards for inclusion, first we need a typology of algorithmic harms. Needs to happen. Policy-making bodies need to consider this. Governments need to consider. And companies need to consider this as well. There are a variety of rules and regulations almost all over the world. This is a matter of active debate. How do we regulate AI? And for standards for inclusion, we need to consider the impacts of artificial intelligence on different aspects of our lives. I would call it essentially two different things. One, we encounter algorithms when we consume goods and services. And conversely, our participation in the broader workforce is also mediated by algorithms. So I would say there is algorithmically mediated consumption and algorithmically mediated production. And we need to understand racial and gender biases, both with existing systems, but also in the newer forms of technology. For instance, there is a lot of hype about some of the Web 3.0 emerging models, such as metaverse, blockchains, digital currencies, smart cities. But if there's data deserts where we don't consider the lives of women and we build smart cities, then essentially we are enduring the context of women's participation in economic activity. So there should be bias-correcting mechanisms at every aspect of our lives. I would say the other thing that we should actively consider is consider the sustainable development goals that we want to gender equality, underlies all of these, that there should be no poverty, no hunger, that everyone needs access to good water, clean sanitation, high quality education, and decent work and economic growth prospects. If we all understand that these are common societal outcomes that we should strive towards, understanding first algorithmic harms, understanding bias-correcting mechanisms, so standard-making bodies need to be actively aware of how these responsible development of responsible artificial intelligence, which I would say is artificial intelligence that is human-centric, that is trustworthy, that's inclusive, that considers privacy and data, safeguards, data access rights, and privacy, and artificial intelligence that's also not just a black box artificial intelligence, but it needs to be explainable. Every aspect of the sustainable development goals, when we use technologies such as mobile and online health information portals, or when we have food security through a lot of apps that people use, or when companies invest in work and economic growth models, all of these need to consider the context of women's rights. There's so many examples where needs of women are routinely overlooked. Most famous example, I think, is the first Apple Health Kit, which tracked pretty much everybody function except women's menstrual cycles. So these are clearing examples where needs of women were not met by industry, and standard-making bodies and governments have a big role to play in ensuring gender parity by at least setting standards to enable quantification of algorithmic harms. Likewise, with a lot of Internet of Things initiatives, unless we take into context women's lives and the women may have special safety and consideration needs when they step out of their homes in many parts of the world, we cannot have inclusive development and safe, smart cities and so forth. So AI and standards of inclusion, as I said, every aspect of what I would call as a principle of responsible artificial intelligence, that artificial intelligence should be inclusive, it should be explainable, it should be trustworthy. It needs human agency and oversight, and we need to safeguard privacy and data rights. All these need to consider gender needs and gender equity at every step of the way. In a lot of cases, we see diversity, equity, and inclusion being discussed as something very separate from gender bias in artificial intelligence. But unless we understand that these are very integrated and they go together, such as inclusive data gathering methods, audits of fairness standards with gender inclusion as norm, explanations for use of AI rooted in gender equity, awareness of how algorithmic accountability or algorithmic harms is disadvantage in the lives of women. And once we need to understand how human agency and oversight, when dealing with lives of the disadvantaged and vulnerable people, so maybe they are migrant women who face double disadvantage in being from a migrant community and also being women and navigating things like the COVID pandemic. Unless we design technology to include the needs of all these different categories of needs of people, then we cannot have sustainable goals, development goals that are met. So roughly, I would say some standards of inclusion would be we need more awareness and algorithmic literacy. The example I have this picture, it's a concept developed by the MIT Media Lab. It's about how even middle graders, as young as middle grade students can be introduced to the concept of algorithmic harms and AI ethics. So this is asking students to reimagine design of popular apps like YouTube. Sorry, Professor Susarla, because we have a constraint of time. Can you conclude in one minute, please? Thank you very much. I'm so sorry for that, thank you. This is my last slide, yeah. So this is, I would conclude by saying we need codes of conduct for AI developers and that concludes my presentation. Thank you, thank you very much, Professor Susarla, for your excellent presentation that highlight how gender-related algorithm basis impact women's participation in economic activity and society and discusses mechanism to address gender equality in AI and how to implement AI in an equitable, trustworthy and transparent manner. It also discusses systems and processes by which we can use her in standards for inclusion through AI. I would like to ask the floor if there is any question regarding the keynotes delivered by Professor Susarla. Due to the time limitation, we can take only one question, if any. Thank you very much. So no question from the floor. Thank you very much, Professor Susarla, for your very interesting presentation. Thank you. Now I would like to invite Mrs. Florence Tunzi to give us a report on gender in ITUT. Mrs. Tunzi is the gender focal point for TSB ITUT. She coordinates all gender-related matters, including the implementation of ITUT resolution 55 on gender equality and empowerment, as well as the activities of FIES. Mrs. Tunzi, the floor is yours. Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I'm pleased to present to you a brief report on gender in ITUT and TSB. Gender has always been an important part of ITUT and TSB. 14 years ago, the first resolution on gender was implemented by WTSC in Johannesburg, calling for mainstreaming in ITUT activities and also empowerment of women. ITUT resolution 55 has since been updated every four years in 2012, 2016, and this WTSC. To ensure alignment with the changing needs and trend in the ICT standardization sector. Ladies and gentlemen, there's a saying that what gets measured gets done. In alignment with the various resolution on gender, TSB has been tracking progress to ensure more action are taken to promote gender equality in the empowerment of women. And here are the key findings. So in terms of participation of women in ITUT statutory meeting, we see that there has been an increase slowly but surely, currently in the current study period at 26%. As you can see here, it's been going up from 14% to 17% and currently at 26%. We also see that in previous WTSC, it has been progressively going up and reporting today that in this WTSC, we have 30% women who have attended this WTSC. On the other hand, in terms of non-statutory event, we see that numbers are higher. For example, when you look at the numbers for AI for good, we see that participation of women and also speakers in the event are roughly 35% and same thing for smart cities. In terms of leadership positions in ITT working groups, the number of female chairmen and vice chair has been stable between 15 and 20% over the years. There's still work to be done. Looking at data by study group, this leadership position in study group, we see that the more technical the topic of the study group, the less women we have in leadership positions. We have also tracked data on fellowship because TSP management has gender as a priority when awarding fellowships and in the current study period, the numbers are 24%. Last but not least, staffing. So currently, 53% of TSP staff are women. While we see that more women are in the general services category, TSP management has also made a priority to promote women in higher grades in the professional category. However, so currently the number of women in the professional category is at 45% and this is a big increase over the last 10 years. However, as we move up the ladder from great people in the above, we see that it's currently dominated by the male population. So there's work to be done as well. So what can we do? What can we do to increase the number of women participating in ITT activities? What can we do to increase the number of women in leadership positions? What can we do to ensure that we have 50 participation at the next WTSA or WTSA 28? It's a collective effort and here's some proposal for your consideration. For example, Member State can be submitting more candidatures of women in leadership positions, vice chair and chair and rapporteurs who nominate women as heads of delegations. Sexual members may also consider nominating women as speakers to ITT events. And internally in TSB, we can increase the number of women at P4 grade and above and also implement tools to track more progress because we have the capacity. And collectively, we can strengthen partnership with other standard development organization to promote gender equality in the sector. Thank you and happy International Women's Day. Thank you very much. Thank you Mrs. Tunsi for giving a very comprehensive report highlighting the important effort undertaken by ITU to promote active participation, contribution and leadership of women in all aspects of ITT activities and processes. Now I would like to welcome Dr. Chisab Lee, the director of TSB to recognize individuals who have made remarkable contributions to the ITU standardization works in terms of impact, continuity and leadership. Dr. Lee, the floor is yours. As we have some, Mr., mother floor is indicated. So we did some of progress of this, our effort to have a more women leadership. As you saw this, the technical domain is rather difficult, still difficult to get a women leadership, but we have a certain areas having recognized the women's participation. Like RIM, you did a great job. And also this is not only from the well-developed regions, developed countries. Also, we have a very good participation from the developing region as well. So this is a moment I have to recognize of their contribution to the activities for our standard development. So I have a list of this name here. I'm not quite sure everybody, someone will be joined by remote, I guess, but just recognize the name, taking into account on a limited time. Madam Shikwan Chi from China, People's Republic of China, as we wish to recognize as a whole leadership, she did great contributions to lead one of our study group, Study Group Five, last two years as acting chair. Study Group Five is the group for environmental aspect, including the electromagnetic field areas. Very technology oriented, but also taking into account environmental aspect. And the second recognition is Madam Mio Naganuma. She is from Japan, is also recognized by the leadership. She's an expert of cybersecurity domain. And she's a rapporteur of quite long years and now she's became of the TSEC, one of the vice chairman, to address of this security subject. And another lady is Weiling Shu, this People's Republic of China. She started her activity in one of our study group but she served more than two times in our advisory group as a vice chairman. So her contributions to lead it, how we can inclusive of any set of a standard development strategy, she always there. So we recognize her activities as a continuity of these activities. And next is the Tanya Marcos Paramio, as a kingdom of Spain. So recognized as a continuity. She also continued this whole activity to help us to address a smarter city subject and other development of our standard works. She is one of, I think she is one of our rapporteurs and there was a focal point of this our activities. And next should be the, I think it's a dream again, dream from Republic of Tunisia, a dream, Bell Hassan Sharif. She is the vice chair of the study group of Soutines. She worked in Tunisia Telecom. She's an expert for the network aspect of this. So quite well-linked is how professional life into our standard works. Lastly, but not least, there was a Nevin Tophik, I think she's here. No, remotely, I think. So from Arab Republic of Egypt, she has an impact or this impact to our standard development. She had quite good contributions for all our discussion, specifically our strategy discussion. She always bring the women's perspective and many insightful ideas to us. So that is what I wanna recognize as our contributors. I wish at the planning potentially we have more and more women's recognize definitely next to WTSA. We definitely wish have more women expert. Thank you very much. Thank you. I would like to convene my sincere thanks and profound gratitude to you, Mr. Chisabli and to TSB for this important nomination as well as for your continuous support and encouragement. It's a great honor to have this nomination and I feel proud to be part of the ITOT family. Thank you, Dr. Lee and congratulations to the winners. You truly deserve this honor. Now, delving into the heart of today's discussion, this panel session will cover why gender matters in setting standards. I would like to invite our distinguished panelists to the podium. I would like to welcome our distinguished panelists, Dr. Jung Jun Kim, the Vice Chairman of WISE. Please can you join us? I ask also Mrs. Christina Flutur, the Director of International Affair at Encom Romania, who are joining us in the room and they are participating remotely to this panel discussion. There are Mrs. Anne Rachelle Inay, the ITU Regional Director for Africa, Mrs. Miho Naganuma, Principal Strategic at NEC Corporation Japan and Mrs. Nevin Taufiq, Senior Expert at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology of Egypt. While providing a snapshot of the gender issues in standardization, the session will also provide a sneak peek into the future course of collaborative action for gender issues and inclusive at the international level. It is indeed here turning to see experts representing different ICT key players take the center stage to engage in fruitful dialogue that will impact the way we embarrass gender equality and fairness in the future. For this panel session, we plan to have two rounds of questions if time allows. Each distinguished panelist is kindly invited to provide his response within three minutes and remote panelists are kindly invited to switch on their webcams when taking the floor. So, to learn more without any delay, I would like to hand the floor to our first panelist, Mrs. Miho Naganuma. She will participate remotely. Just to introduce shortly, Mrs. Miho Naganuma. She has over 20 years experience in the ICT industry. She has developed her career in private sector and has mainly focused on cyber security. She's now in NAC Corporation and is responsible for leading intelligent research for policy and regulatory impact on digital trust field, including AI. During her career, she has also been actively involved in international standardization work in many organizations, including ITU, ISO, other SDOs and experts committees for over 20 years. Mrs. Miho, in your view, why it is so important to women nowadays to get involved in setting standards and what are the high value women can obtain from their involvement in the standardization activities? Mr. Miho, thank you. Thank you very much for your introduction and thank you very much for giving me this great opportunity for this fantastic event for the women. And also, thank you very much, CSB, for your recognition to myself. It was very great and surprising. So, as to introduce, my name is Miho Naganuma. I'm from NAC Corporation based on Japan, Tokyo. So, I'm a private sector. So, let me say, let me answer your question. I think this is a very good question. We need to have some sort of motivation to all women to involve in the standardization, to answer the question. Because I've been in this society for many years, over 20 years. So, let me say that first of all, I really would like to share the fact that the standardization activity is very, very international activity. So, as you see, even in ITU, T, we have delegates from quite a number of countries, including from the member states and sex to member. So, and they are quite diverse. So, people come from the government, industry, research institute and academia and also we have some colleagues from the civil societies and et cetera. So, now the nominate women are very much involved in and working in every sector's globally. So, it is quite natural that women are involved in such community, including some standardization community from each entities. So, we've got a lot of reason to, women need to be involved in, but the fact here is, a lot of women are very much working. Well, to be honest, and in speaking, it was true that the number of women were relatively small in the ICT and the telecom sectors in the past, particularly in the private sector, but now the situation is completely different. So, now there's a situation that has really changed and I'm so glad to see that many women, regardless of the generation, are participating in the standard activity. So, as I mentioned, the idea appreciates the fact that the standardization is a very much international activity. So, this is the point that I really wanted to see the high value of the standardization for all women. You see, quite naturally, networking and human network is going to be your value for each discipline, but also I really wanted to focus in on some skill issues here. So, once you're involved in the standardization activity, you are required communication through the old processes with the various participants who have different views, even in the same technical field. So, sometimes it's quite tough having some communication and some negotiation through the old processes where the standardization is not so easy all the time, but such experience will keep you high level of value and high level of negotiation and communication skills. And also you can understand the global perspective with the diversities. Then, if you get more experienced, you can actually take the leadership to the community and that also give you the further skill, like leadership skill and also the coordination skill. You see, women really needed to get certain skill in your career and standardization does not really encourage your own skill and also your career as well. So, I believe that more women can enjoy such experiences and it's always to give you the high value to be involved with that activity and you can always find your new world and also new your own skills. So, that's a great value for the standardization that exactly I have seen in my career. So, that's why I hope that this answer is your question. So, over to you, Arim. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much, Miho. Thank you. Thank you for your response, which highlights the benefits that women can get from their involvement in setting standards and how they could strengthen their negotiation and communication skills with diverse scope through the processes of setting standardization and take leadership positions. Thank you again. Now, let's move to our second panelist, Mrs. Anne Rachelle Inet. However, the involvement of women in setting standards could have a much wider impact as it could help achieve the sustainable development goals. This is the purpose of my second question, which I would like to ask to Mrs. Anne Rachelle Inet. Just to introduce briefly, Mrs. Anne Rachelle Inet is the ITU Regional Director for Africa. She also serves as liaison to African Union and UNCA prior to joining ITU. She was the Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at the American Registry for Internet Numbers and the primary link to governments of US, Canada and more than 25 Caribbean and North Atlantic economies that constitute arenas, regions and the focal points for international IGU, IEU and their work. Mrs. Rachelle, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much, Miho. Good afternoon, everybody and happy International Women's Day. Congratulations to one of the ladies who were awarded earlier. This is fantastic to see and it is also fantastic to hear the numbers that an ITU level was still not there at 30%. We absolutely need to do much, much better. And it will take all of us to do it together. The involvement of women in standards is not new, but thank God, you know, we're making a lot more strides in there. It is important to understand that standards are part of our life. Standards are part of social development. Standards are part of everything that we do every day. So we can't just think about having standards that only respond to 50% of humanity. That the other 50% would be left on the bench. You know, it is important that women participate. We've seen it when one of our keynote speakers talked about how AI can be misinformed by standards because they do not have the, you know, the little touches that come from, in fact, women. From, you know, I come from a developing country and I can tell you from, you know, drinking water all the way to sustainable environment to, you know, sustainable livelihoods and families. If we do not have women informed and we do not have women part of set in the standards, we actually leave half of the knowledge on the floor because believe it or not, I mean, my grandmother was one who taught me, for example, you know, how to clean, you know, water with moringa seeds. All right, so, and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of things that we definitely, honestly, on a daily basis do, but that we do not think are informed by our own behaviors. And when standards are only informed by, I would say, male behavior, then they basically turn the same way out there in society, meaning, you know, harmful to the half of us. So it is important that we really understand that, you know, women being part of this process are going to definitely, is going to, you know, help us achieve sustainable development goals. I mean, we cannot achieve the 17 of them without women. We're half of humanity. And we have to be part of the process of digital transformation, the process of social transformation globally. And there is no way this is going to change. So we need to make sure that girls are not only going into STEM, but they also have this team to do it because, believe it or not, and then an informed standards that, you know, that is done via critical thinking is a lot more useful to all of us than just one that is done the technical way. So thank you very much. Thank you very much, Rachelle, for your clear response. I have another question for you, Rachelle. How could the involvement of women in setting standards help achieve the sustainable development goals? Can you hear me now? Yes. Can you hear my question or? Can I repeat? Can you repeat? Thank you. Yes, thank you. How could the involvement of women in setting standards help achieve the SDGs? So this is where again, you know, opening up standard organizations to, you know, females is definitely very important. A lot of our speakers from, you know, the Secretary General of ITU to all of the everybody who has spoken before has said, you know, it is important that women participate in all standard setting organizations. I have worked in a few that, you know, that have the privilege of doing standards for a lot of them, what we call the Internet and the global Internet today. And I can tell you that there aren't that many of us, but each one of these organizations has recognized over the years from, you know, the most technical ones to the ones that are doing the daily job that it is important. It is truly important that we get women in those settings, not only to be part of the work of setting the standards, but also working with them because it is important, you know, there is this subtlety of one of the things that we've been doing for the past few years is making sure that the technical communities are talking to, you know, the regular folks and the regular folks are talking to the technical community. Well, I have to say that, you know, wherever, okay, I'm being a bit biased, but hey, I have to say wherever it's been with, you know, a lot of my women colleagues, you know, we tend to navigate into, oh, how has this been helpful or not, and how has this, you know, not helped us that much. Instead of just thinking about, oh, this is what the standard is supposed to do, this is what it's going to do, and not think about, you know, things like, you know, biases in human rights, you know, today, just to tell you, I mean, one of the things that I discovered, an anecdote, one of the things that I discovered during COVID, my niece and my daughter had COVID in July 2020, and we went to the, how do you say, the clinic, and we discovered, you know, something that I had no idea about, which is that simply, you know, the oxymeter doesn't read oxygen properly, you know, in brown people. It is one of the biases that exists, okay? Some of the others are just simple cognitive biases. Once I was in meeting, you know, one of the guys who was coming to the meeting came in, and because I was at the door with one of my colleagues, he just, you know, gave us his coat to hand, you know, so whether it's technical standards, whether it is, you know, the daily life standards for our own social development, we need to understand that, you know, it is important that women are part of this process. This one person who came and gave us his coat, because he thought we're ushers, because we're, you know, two of the only ladies that were around, this is something that is sort of a built in cognitive standard that he has, because he's a male. And because it was a technical organization, and because he thought, yeah, there aren't supposed to be that many ladies, you know. So it is truly really important that, you know, women are given their places in standard setting organizations because we belong, we can do the job, and, you know, we can actually help make it better. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mrs. Rashen, for your response, highlighting the interesting role that women can play in achieving the STG through their involvement in the standardization activities. Thank you. However, getting women involved in the process of the standard development is not an easy task, as women may face many challenges and barriers. I invite you to know more about this issue with Dr. Jung Kim. Dr. Kim joined the electronic at the entry in 1988, and he is currently in charge of the Intelligence Convergence Research Lab in Etri, a senior vice president. He has had about 33 years' research experiences in various divisions of Etri, including Info Communications Technology Division, IT Strategy Resource Division, Information Telecommunication Technology Division, and Protocol Engineering Center. He has been currently serving as vice chair of ITUT Study Group 20 and its co-chair of working party and the co-convenier of the joint coordination activity on Internet of Things and Smart Cities and communities under Study Group 20. So, Dr. Kim, what are, in your opinion, the main challenges for getting women involved in the process of standard development? Thank you. Thank you so much, Lim, the Madam Chairperson. Good morning, Dr. Lim. Good evening, everyone. My name is Jung Kim. I work for Etri. I'm from Harlequin, North Korea. Before the answer, yes, my answer would be quite short, because we are running out of time, but I would like to give some good memory of the women at the Madam Chairperson. I had very good memory to work together with Lim at the ITUT Study Group 13. I myself and Lim were co-vices chair of the Study Group 13 in ITUT. We had a very good experience, and we had very good memory to work together for the standard development until I moved to another study room, which is a standard plan. So, I'm very honored, very glad to be here with all of you as a representative from May. Not as a female, but anyway, okay, I would like to give the answer for your question. But considering its importance of gender equality, or the gender balance in standard developments, I have prepared my statement today to more focus on this session and better deliver my soul to all of you. In my humble opinion, it's all about professional competence in standard developments, whether you are a woman or a man. The evolution of telecommunication, ICT, and emotional technology has allowed everybody to access the information they want. Nevertheless, based on my long-time environment here in ITUT, the main challenges of forgetting women involved in standard development were when most experts who participate in standardization meeting had been male. So, although I've seen more and more a woman experts joining the ITU team meeting recently, the majority is still male. So, although there are more and more the competent woman professionals in telecommunications, ICT, the underlying prejudice of a standardization is more suitable to men to create a kind of barrier. So, for example, there is no significant gender gap in Korea in terms of access to ICT infrastructure and services and digital skills. But there remain difficulties for women in terms of career development in ICT or STEM. And there is a strong imbalance between the woman and man in the ICT industry. So, this stereotype does not exist only in Korea. The young woman and girl around the world this proper nature of discouraging from starting subjects like ICT and STEM or pursuing careers in this field as others. So, this would be a good answer from myself. Thank you very much, Dr. Kim. It was a pleasure to working with you instead of Dr. Kim and you are my best friend and we have a good relationship till now and I'm really happy to work with you and thank you very much for highlighting those challenges which are unfortunately discouraging or even preventing women from getting involved in the process of setting standards. Thank you very much. So, now to have another view on this issue mainly from women perspective and we focus on developing countries. I would like to ask the same question to Mrs. Nevin Tawfiq. Mrs. Nevin Tawfiq worked for several years as instructor of political science and has also been working for the past 30 years in the field of international relations, research, policy, studies and strategic thinking. She is currently senior international relations expert at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. So, Mr. Nevin, what are the main challenges for getting women involved in the process of standards development according to your experience? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Reem and thank you again for ITU and for actually the recognition I was very touched and really humbled by this gesture. I have to say before talking about what I consider the challenges for women in standardization that I had maybe a different experience in standardization I don't come from the STEM background, I come more from the social sciences although I've been working for long years in the Ministry of Communication Information Technology. My involvement in the standardization came actually by coincidence but I recall that quite well 10 years ago when I started my first meeting at ITU in standardization in study group 5 that as soon as I attended the first meeting I simply felt that wow this is really what I would like to work on one of the reasons is because standardization is really so much focused they have such an impact on the policy space of course on the different aspects of our policy space in the SDGs in the different SDGs but they are also they are really force for good in societies and they ensure that product services and processes work as intended and thus would have an enormous impact on economic growth trade and the protection of health and safety and as Andrashel has mentioned we're not just talking about the very very purely technical standard about all types of standards as well the methodology of working in standards has been really an eye opener for me and has been very very appealing the methodology the rules, the procedures, the content in addition actually the international setup the dialogue, the negotiations that are taking place with the different stakeholders so this appeal of standards has really changed a lot in me and it has also impacted the work that I'm doing also in my ministry in Egypt the whole methodology has really affected the way I work and I'm very grateful for that why would the women really what are the challenges that we face women in the domain of standardization as you mentioned Rima I come from a developing country and I think that the stereotypes are still affecting us to a large extent it is true that women can and aspire to reach positions in policy making in decision making in all the professions but I think that we still need to do some more work in the area of standardization not just the standardization but it need to be proactive in involving more women but I think that it is a two way dialogue we need also to advocate as women we need to advocate the importance of standardization in our daily life in a way to disseminate the message among women and we need also to convey or maybe to relay our personal stories because really standard making is a long process it's a rigorous process it's a tedious and it is quite a difficult process that takes a long time but we need maybe to highlight the benefits of working in this particular field of work so one of the challenges is that I think that women do not know enough about the impact of standardization on our lives nowadays and that we need to do an effort in that in addition of course to the different challenges that have been mentioned actually by previous speakers another important challenge is the need for capacity building and mentorship and I'm very happy about the MOU that has been signed today between Australia and the ITU for raising capacities of women because this is much needed not only in expertise in the technical area but also in the soft skills that are necessary in the process of standard making but in addition to capacity building I would say that mentoring is extremely important and I've been really lucky to have excellent mentors male and female mentors I would say maybe more male mentors actually teaching me one to one on how to approach this big box of standardization how to start working how to move one step at a time and I'm doing this I'm trying to do this now with other colleagues or other people so advocacy understanding the impact of standards on our daily lives is very very important capacity building mentorship I think are challenges that we need to address in attracting more women to this important area of work thank you very much Thank you very much Nevin for sharing with us your view and your very rich experience on this matter of challenges and we focus also on developing countries so in order to overcome these challenges, effective efforts at national, regional and international scale are needed this is the scope of my following question to Mrs. Cristina Flutur following the question that I would like to ask Cristina so Mrs. Cristina just to introduce you briefly she joined the national authority for management and regulatory in communication in 2012 as an expert in the unit for international relations and European affairs she has an active role in representing Romania in the ITU and other international fora Mrs. Cristina how could ICT at local, regional and international scales support the involvement of women in the standardization activities and what could be done by SDOs in these purposes Thank you Thank you very much and thank you for having me thank you for having this event and this panel I think it's very important to be encouraging more women to participate in this to be very technical and in this man's world in terms of well what my previous experience was I started participating in the tea sector in 2013 I think in study group 3 and it has been really amazing experience and I found there many very knowledgeable people both men and women I think in terms of what we can do at regional level also having my hat as the CPT coordinator international level I think this assembly is a very good example of what we can do so we've seen many regions come with proposals to amend the resolution 55 with concrete steps forward with encouraging and asking for traineeships and mentorship programs and such very practical methods to encourage more women and to have a balanced approach through every level of the sector because we are talking about women taking the floor and speaking on behalf of their countries or their regions and also taking up leadership positions but to take a leadership position I'm speaking from my own experience I want some training before I want to be sure and self confident when I go out there and be able to chair a meeting so this is why we need to take it step by step and I think this is very encouraging also to see the project for the planning potential conference that is also taking place this year to take it step by step gradually we will see many women being encouraged in this sense and I think we see a domino effect when I see a woman in a leadership position being self confident and managing things very well I feel encouraged myself to take up a leadership position so I think we encourage each other and let's not forget about the support of the men that have the experience and also the patients and thank you very much for that to encourage us and to support us all the way thank you Thank you very much Fissina for those interesting recommendations and the ICT players are invited to undertake concrete urgent measures to support women in the standardization field I would like to continue with you Fissina for my following question as you have spoken about the SDOs role in supporting women in standardization and to ask you what kind of assistance or measures could be further requested from ICT to support women's involvement in the standardization process and I think into account the significant effort of ICT in general and ICT in particular for this purpose Thank you Thank you very much The ICT is a family and we have the three sectors and we are now here for the standardization sector highest body of decision making body and throughout we can see in every sector all of these networks of women that are raising and probably they will go up to the potential level which is the highest level of course of the union I think this is the year of course because of the pandemic we had to plan for three conferences in one year after the other three months apart this is very challenging but also let's take on the opportunity of this. Let's see our actions how they impact every sector the T sector, the D sector and then we go to the umbrella big umbrella of the planning potential conference so these steps are the proper ones to take I think women that took leadership positions here they are encouraged to do so also at the planning potential level I'm saying this as a host country I really wish to see leadership positions in the planning potential conference that will be in my home country Thank you very much, Cristina for sharing with us those relevant ideas and I hope really for you to be a chair to participate in the PP events such as WTSA WTDC Thank you very much. I would like to have another view on this subject and maybe the view of a high responsible at ITU so may I ask you Mrs. Rachele the same question considering the significant efforts of ITU in general and ITUT in particular to support women's involvement in the standardization process what kind of assistance or measures could be further requested from ITUT Thank you Mr. Rachele Thank you very much I think I would like to actually say that it's not only at ITUT in fact you know we have networks of women in the three sectors but what is the most important for me and I think it's the advocacy you know it is important for us to also make sure that people understand what the ITU is the more I go out the more I realize that you know people have no idea what ITU is doing whether in you know the radio communication sector that is you know you can call it the access and connectivity one in the standard sector where there is the interoperability that works and you know why that is something that is very important you know nowadays for all of the equipment that we're using or the development of regulations that actually inform you know the use and the work with that equipment but also even you know making of those equipment so ITUT definitely has you know a responsibility in terms of not only its management but also our the people in terms of member states that come there to foster to bring women you know inside our midst and on the other side the same women but also you know helped by ITU and others definitely need to get the message out you know it is important that the message is not only learned but used in terms of for example what is it that we can do to foster more appropriation understanding of standards in this in academic midst for example you know there's a lot of young women who are in universities to this day who are even in technical sectors but have no idea what ITU is or what you know standards are and how to go into that field so I think that the advocacy for me is really very important we need you know with ITUT to go out there to not only do this you know for our members but also go out and make sure that we reach the youth who yes wanted or not are going to be the ones replacing us here so it is absolutely important that they are informed and I think we really should look into how is it that we can take you know the knowledge of what ITU is and what it does all the way to you know the regular folks and youth included thank you very much thank you very much Mrs. Rashem for your helpful recommendation which will be certainly captured in the events now I would like to invite Mrs. Neven to share with us her experience and to tell us what does she learns most as a professional woman during her involvement in standards setting Mrs. Neven Thank you very much Rim I think that I touch a little bit on what I learned in the standardization what is it at ITU during the 10 past years but I would like to add to that something else that the work of standardization requires a lot of patience and requires a lot of respect and understanding of the different cultures this is something that I learned quite well I think at ITU during our sessions in standard making being able to communicate being able to mediate between different players is very important and it doesn't come automatically it comes with practice and I think that one of the places that require that very particularly is standardization bodies of course we don't all share the same language so there are sometimes difficulties in the language we don't share the same culture and we certainly do not share the same interest all the time so being able to mediate between these different factors is very important and I've seen a lot of really great chairs of ITU groups doing that I learned a lot from that and I think that women in particular I don't want to use stereotypes but maybe the patients to be able to mediate with the different stakeholders to take the dialogue one step at a time the different people from different backgrounds is something that is very much required and is very much needed in standardization work another thing that I learned is really to keep going but sometimes this work does not lead to immediate actions and this is particularly clear in issues that are quite controversial so it is very important to keep going, persistence trying different ways trying different solutions trying different approaches using all your skills whether the research, whether the expertise whether the mediation, the negotiations but keep going even if the process is long and sometimes tiresome the other thing is being afraid of failures we can all succeed in certain things and fail at other points so it's very important to accept that it's not always your opinion that will dominate at the end you have to reach compromises you have to respect the other and you have to be able to go into this give and take and find win-win solutions in addition to that of course very long hours and at the end of the day if you really feel that you do something of value whether to your society or to the international community this is what keeps you going thank you Dim Thank you very much Neven for sharing with us your very rich experience for your motivating speech we come now to the final question in this panel I would like to have different viewpoints maybe from the industry and the academia so I would like to start with Mrs. Miho what recommendations or advice would you like to give to women who are starting their career in the standardization fields Thank you very much I already had quite useful and debatable comments from my colleague here so I'm not going to make my comments wrong I simply want to cheer up all women colleagues in ITU I'm also attending an ITUD and it's a lot of women participating over there so here we are talking about standardization here in the T-Sexer so this is a really great place to really give us the great opportunity to communicate with various experts and also the standardization always dealing with hot topics and also the potential future potential topics technical field in the technical field so you can see how the world is going to and also if you join the world like in ITU you can also see some global issues such as the standardization gaps and something that it's something really it's difficult something difficult to touch from the private sector but you can actually see that in this world so you see here in particular in the private sector you are the one that we are the one who create, who design and create and develop our own careers so we always consider which skill and what experiences really giving us a great value to ourselves so I really encourage all my colleagues to to use this venue as a strategic way and this give us a great opportunity and you see Dr. Kim will actually mention something about the barrier to involve some women but you see once the women come to this world in the standardization world what we have to do is actually doesn't have any gaps between men and women see the number of men and women between men and women might be still different but once we do what we have to do here in this world it's exactly the same during this WTSA you see that all discussion that are ongoing during the day and night and people really having some tough negotiation in this process so what we have to do is exactly the same it doesn't matter the men and the women so we always welcome to join to more women participating here so I really want to say do not hesitate to take any chance to be in standardized members so that's something that I can say from the industry side so thank you very much for your question thank you very much Miho for your valuable advice I would like to ask the same question to Dr Kim so Dr Kim what recommendation or advice would you like to give to women who are starting their career in the standardization field thank you Rim also my answer would be quite the shots I'm a little bit wonder not I can give them right advice however what I want to say is that the increasing the number of young women professional in this appearance is quite key to a better tomorrow, a better future so I too is already doing many activities on this closing agenda gap and I too should engage more actively so I think you can provide programs to increase the number of women working in technology including global classroom so this online learning platform can provide access to online course and resources to improve knowledge in standardization so also it is essential to provide the same networking opportunities to girls and women to participate in the world of ITT with mentorship anybody who has passion and professional background is welcome to this standardization field standardization activities are not only for older men when you when you join young you have much more chance to develop good standards and engage with competent colleagues worldwide I've seen recently in ITT study party meetings where many women professionals propose a new item and finish until the end so now it's your turn I believe Thank you very much Dr. Kim your advices are very helpful for us now I would like to ask if there are any questions from the floor due to time constraints I think we can have only one questions from the floor so please if you have one question for our distinguished panelists so I see none because we have a constraint so we come to the end of this panel so I would like to extend my sincere thanks to our distinguished panelists for their helpful and interesting views and opinion now I would like to invite Dr. Bilal Jamusi so I would like to invite Dr. Bilal Jamusi the chief of the study groups department at TSB to give a wrap up of the panel discussions Dr. Bilal the floor is yours Thank you very much Dr. Reem excellent distinguished colleagues ladies and gentlemen good afternoon I'll be very brief to wrap up basically 12 years ago when I joined ITU we had in terms of staff 30 of P5's senior counselors were men and the one action that TSB can do is of course in terms of hiring and recruiting give an opportunity to women to grow and to take leadership today with the guidance and help of Dr. Lee and previously Dr. Malcolm Johnson we've been able to today have three women P5's and two men and those three women P5's have produced or presented us with GSS the secretariat for GSS of this assembly and the committee secretariat for committee three and four so when TSB as the staff on the staff side we can make a difference we can address the gender issues and standards we also today in TSB most of our P1 P2 staff are women and that's the pipeline over the next years to ensure that we have equilibrium between men and women at least on the staffing side from the delegate perspective we have always encouraged women to take on leadership positions in study groups focus groups and in this assembly we have one woman chair of committee five we have a chair of working group three A we have several vice chairs and many of the ad hoc's that convened over the weekend we have a chair by women delegates and that's important because it's an opportunity to grow in an international diverse way to lead us from the membership perspective another thing that we can do in TSB excuse me is the fellowships we always try to bias towards having more women participate on the fellowships and then to conclude I think in order to achieve our objective more equilibrium and have the gender equation addressed properly as Navin was mentioning there is the need to have the opportunity so we need to open the door for women colleagues both in staff and in the delegations to have the opportunity to lead and to be present to coach, mentor and train but also to provide a safe space a safe space of any intimidation or harassment so if we put all of those together I think there is an opportunity for us to bridge the gap in gender and also to ensure that we have the gender equation and the gender importance in how we develop standards from both the membership and the staff in the 19 thank you very much and happy women's day thank you very much for providing the comprehensive and excellent summary of the main issues discussed during the panel and for highlighting the provided recommendation by the distinguished panelists so we will come to our closing session so the closing just to go this brings us to the end of this second wise event I would like to express the gratitude to all of you for your participation in this event I would like also to take this opportunity to thank all the distinguished speakers and panelists for their valuable insights on the importance of gender matters in setting standards and the transitions to an inclusive environment with the use of frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence which I believe will improve our approach in standards development processes as well as achieving the sustainable development goals finally I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all of you who generously helped us in the preparation of this event with a special thanks to the TSP secretariat thank you and enjoy the rest of the WTSA wise event is adjourned thank you