The 1st World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) will be held in Geneva, in December 2003, organized by the United Nations. Previous United Nations World Summits includes the 1992 World Summit on  Environment and Development (also known as the Rio Earth Summit), and the World Conference on Women in Beijing during 1995.

WSIS will address the broad range of themes concerning the Information Society and adopt a Declaration of Principles and plan of action, addressing the whole range of issues related to the Information Society. Preparations for the summit are currently on, and the viewpoints of various groups and sections are being formulated for inclusion in the deliberations.

India is a country of one billion people. To speak for the Indian women is to speak for one-twelfth of humanity. Surprisingly, there is no representation for this big section of the world, as we prepare to lay down the vision and guiding principles of a new world, the emerging Information Society. 

This large part of humanity is distinctive in many important ways, generally, as well as in its position with respect to the emerging information age. India is a developing nation, and a strongly tradition bound society. On these accounts, Indian women suffer a weaker social position. But India is developing fast, and its social and civil institutions are relatively very well developed. India is also the world’s IT power-house today. Though most of this power at present is oriented to fuel growth and development on foreign shores, a positive drag effect on the Indian society is building fast. IT would certainly be a bigger and a faster impact in developing India than many nations otherwise similarly placed. Already, experimental initiatives in the area of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) for development are fairly advanced here.

If there is a strong ICTs for development movement building up, there are also very effective established civil society organizations in India articulating and representing women issues and rights. They have good influence in policy formulating, as well as great reach and impact in all other areas of the society. In fact, these organizations have come close to getting a one-third reservation in the legislatures in India. 

But, the problem is that much of the ‘traditional’ development sector, which is the sector working for decades now in the areas of livelihood development, women issues, education, health, community issues, habitat protection etc, mostly still does not share the vision of an emerging information society, or at least its relevance to real ground level issues of development. IT is often seen as an issue of big business, richer classes and globalization. If anything it may only be taken as distracting attention from people’s real problems and needs today. 

The IT for development sector on the other hand has often worked with the tenacity, which we now know was a naivety, of the dotcoms, to take a single-prong information and communication technology based approach to development. It has seen IT as the new business, not just as a great new tool to do the old business much better. The same old business of devising strategies for community development, for educating people, for gender mainstreaming, and the rest. 

Together, we are left, on one hand, with people devising the framework of a new society without due representation to the long fought for major social issues of today. On the other hand, the agencies who are so strong in representing and fighting for these issues do not believe that a new society is being built at all. And if it is, they find no reason to believe that this new society holds a promise for a better accomplishment of the very goals that they have set for themselves for so many years. 

It is this disassociation that we have to bridge in India. And it is true not only of the civil society organizations; Indian governments are very active in the social field, and there is no doubt about the sensitivity and resources on gender issues in the Ministry of Woman and Child Development. Only, one is not sure whether a strong enough pitch, or any at all, is being made with the Ministry of IT and others involved in the process, to incorporate gender perspectives in the Indian position at the WSIS. 

Gender awareness is important in issues of infrastructure policy and implementation, in devising access strategies, for ICT based community initiatives, in developing content, for devising new applications and new services delivered over ICT channels and in ensuring equality - and if needed positive discrimination - in IT education, capacity building and IT based employment. While the ICT revolution has mostly relied on market- based approaches, adequate role of community-centered strategies will also be necessary to ensure the inclusion of the marginalized sections and accomplishing social and developmental goals. The right to equal opportunities, to all information and knowledge and to communicate freely may today have to be mediated by a right of equitable access to the new ICTs. 

It is our major responsibly today that we ensure that the energies devoted to the ‘traditional’ issues of development, particularly those related to gender, and the energies focused on use of the powers of the new ICTs to build a new and a better world are brought together. If we have to sensitize IT related policy makers to gender issues, we may also convince those already involved with women rights that ICTs are a major opportunity to reach their goals. And that a new world is coming, whether they acknowledge it or not. These established civil and governmental organizations are a strong and a very well developed force in India. So, we must foremost focus on channelizing their energies to see that they have their due say at this crucial hour and that this new world ushers a society with greater gender equality. This is the rationale and the mandate for a ‘National Gender Program in India for the forthcoming WSIS’.

Gender action groups and the ICT for development professionals must get together along with the respective representatives of the governments, and the other stakeholders like those from the industry, to build our position for the WSIS with respect to gender awareness. As the time is short, the immediate agenda should be to organize a national level workshop to get all stakeholders together to deliberate their view points on these issues. They must together formulate and signs a ‘National Gender Declaration for the WSIS’. Sufficient gender representation should be obtained on the national delegation for the summit. The government must be encouraged to open the stance that it has formulated to take at the summit for deliberations with civil society groups. 

This ‘National Gender Program’ (NGP) should remain an ongoing process even during and after the WSIS, to form and articulate gender perspectives in the building of the information society. For example, a study must be commissioned on the interaction between gender equality and ICT. It should include development of a gender equality and ICT baseline indicators, conceptual tools and case studies on the impact of ICT on achieving gender equality. An important element of this National Program will be to keep connected with the global process in this area.

This initiative of a NGP for the WSIS will be organized with the support of the WSIS-Gender Caucus. The WSIS-Gender Caucus is a multi-stakeholder group comprising women and men from national governments, civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and the United Nations system.

It is important that we pitch in the gender issues in time and in strength now, because the guiding principles of a new society are being laid. It is best that as we lay the bricks, gender equality is built into the very foundations of the emerging information society.

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