Women planning to pip men on the net

                                            
The Gender equality war is not only gaining ground physically. The war is even ongoing, online. At the moment,the United Nations, UN Women has entered into a strategic partnership with Intel Corporation on the lntel “She Will Connect” program which seeks to reduce the digital gender gap through a combination of digital literacy training, online peer networks, and gender-relevant content.

The partnership is said to be premised on UN Women’s recognition of the critical role that Intel has played in re-defining business perspectives, practices and strategies, to promote the rights and freedoms of women and girls. Meanwhile the UN Women, said they will on the other hand, bring expertise as lead actors in the area of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

As a global organization, UN Women will also leverage its global presence, networks and operations towards the longer term agenda of this proWomen Representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS. All these strategies, meant to pip their men counterpart on the net, was following a recent survey which saw that only 200 million men globally, made the difference between the number of men and women on the net.

While the survey found men on the net globally to be 1.5 billion, women were just closely following suit with a total number of 1.3 billion, leaving only 200 million as the difference. The revelation came from the UN Women Representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS Dr. Grace Ongile, at the 5-Day training of women entrepreneurs on access to ICTs and Internet in Abuja recently.

According to Ongile, the number of women Internet users globally has been estimated at 1.3 billion accounting for 37 percent of all women worldwide. This is in comparison to the number of male Internet users which is estimated at 1.5 billion -putting the total global Internet gender gap at 200 million.

She explained that the digital gender gap was found to be more pronounced in the developing world, where an estimated 16 percent fewer women than men, used the Internet “compared to only 2 percent fewer women than men in the developed world”.

She said that “in view of the forgoing, the UN Women has entered into a strategic partnership with Intel Corporation on the lntel “She Will Connect” program which seeks to reduce the digital gender gap through a combination of digital literacy training, online peer networks, and gender-relevant content.

“This partnership with Intel is premised on UN Women’s recognition of the critical role that Intel has played in re-defining business perspectives, practices and strategies, to promote the rights and freedoms of women and girls.

“UN Women will on the other hand, bring its expertise as a lead actor in the area of gender equality and women’s empowerment. As a global organization, UN Women will also leverage its global presence, networks and operations towards the longer term agenda of this programme.”

Also speaking, the Director General, National Centre for Women Developemnt, NCWD, Lady Onyeka Onwenu stated that the training known as Technology and Entrepreneurship Training for Women in Nigeria (TETWIN) is aimed at accelerating gender equality and women empowerment.

For her, the UN women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the UN character, among other issues works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls, empowerment of women and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action, peace and security.

“As partners, we are making efforts to strongly push for a wider narrative and vision of where ‘African Women’ issue should go and we believe that when you empower a woman, you empower a nation, you empower the world,” she averred.