It took me two weeks to recover from my experience of attending CSW67. Primarily because my body was fighting the post-nightshift fatigue and jet lag. But I was also recovering from the overwhelming solidarity, inspirational action and progress of communities across the globe working hard to make our world a better place for womxn and girls using technology and digital innovation.

What exactly is the Commission on the Status of Women?

The CSW is best imagined as a massive 2-week conference that aims to promote womxn’s rights by documenting the reality of women’s lives throughout the world and shaping global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women. The audience was multidisciplinary and multisectoral and included 7,000 participants( even more virtually), including four heads of state and government and 116 ministers, 205 side events on UN premises, and about 700 NGO parallel events.  I was part of two delegations- UN Women UK and the Global Alliance for Surgery Obstetrics Trauma and Anaesthesia Care (G4) Women & Girls working group.

For me, it is an excellent opportunity to connect with people and organisations outside my clinical sphere. It provided a vast exposure to examples of research, advocacy, policy and grassroots movements championing womxn and girls globally, as well as an opportunity to continue building on lessons learnt about international policy and advocacy from my time at Harvard with the Paul Farmer Global Surgery Fellowship.

However, attending CSW67 three years following the COVID-19 pandemic was a sobering call to reality. Globally, decades of progress in womxn’s rights and gender equality are being reversed at alarming rates. In Afghanistan, women and girls have been erased from public life. In the US, women’s sexual and reproductive rights have been rolled back with the overturning of Roe V Wade. In Nigeria, girls risk kidnapping in their attempt to gain an education. In the UK, sexist police prey on women and girls they have sworn to protect. For the first time in three decades, global maternal mortality rates are increasing.

I was naturally drawn to events focusing on health, African countries and the UK- a reflection of my positionality. However, I intentionally challenged myself to attend events which focused on issues impacting rural and indigenous womxn, the Middle East, legislative systems and business.

Highlights for me included:

• The inspiring call to action from the International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) about how lack of data sovereignty contributes to violence, erasure and undermining and exploitation of indigenous womxn and cultural knowledge. IWGIA highlighted the importance of upholding indigenous epistemology, which acknowledges the interconnectedness of life, humanity and nature and whilst rejecting Western epistemology, which promotes individualism and competition. Gender equality can only be achieved through collectivism and collaboration.

• Learning of the shocking statistic that at our current pace, gender equality will be achieved in 300 years!

• Challenging my narrow view of the importance of space and gender by attending an event “ Liftoff: Space Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality”. Space technology is relevant to mapping, planning and monitoring around the environment, climate change, land uses, water and food security, health, epidemiology, disaster prevention and response, education and communication infrastructure. In tanzania geospatial technology to monitor land right rights for women.

• Critiquing the UNFPA ROI tool, which advocates for womxn's well-being and reproductive justice in business spaces by making a business case for investing in initiatives and policies which improve the sexual and reproductive well-being of their workers. I look forward to this tool being expanded to incorporate issues related to the peri-menopause and menopause( the largest chunk of a woman’s life)

• Discovering how initiatives like VERIFIED use digital technology to tackle the gendered misinformation and disinformation that negatively impacts womxn during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Exploring how NGOs such as StopNCII.org transform the traumatic experience of digital sexual harassment and revenge porn by empowering survivors to challenge their attackers with digital community support through the platforms collectively buying into and enforcing policies against non-consensual image sharing.

• Examples of how Ukraine and Syria are using innovative technology to improve the living conditions of women and girls in disaster zones.

Whilst I remain hopeful about initiatives and innovation, I am sceptical about digital technology widening the gap for women and girls living with disabilities or in rural areas and low and middle-income countries. Bridging the digital gender divide will require more than just digital infrastructure. We need to address factors like affordability, access to electricity, online privacy and safety, social norms and digital skills and literacy—all of which are mediated by gender.

This will require collaboration across all sectors- governments, educational institutions, healthcare, businesses and civil society and women’s organizations, among others.

So for that reason, we all have a role to play.

In summary:

1. There is a deep gender digital divide which negatively impacts society, not just womxn.

2. Bridging these gaps starts with a zero-tolerance culture for any form of gender-based violence.

3. To address this divide, we must act decisively to debunk harmful gender stereotypes surrounding womxn and girls and confront misinformation and unconscious bias.

4. We can accelerate progress by mainstreaming a gender perspective in the design, implementation and evaluation of emerging technologies and digital policy.

5. Grassroots organisations must lead in these efforts as they are key to impact and sustainability. Currently, only 1.9% of the funding currently reaches grassroots organisations; All efforts should be made to amplify and support the work of grassroots movements involved in STEM and digital education.

6. Public and private sectors must invest critical funding into gender-inclusive innovation, technology, and feminist organisations whilst upholding the sovereignty of communities and organisations.

7. An intersectional human rights approach should be placed at the core of digitalisation to ensure that womxn and girls, including the most marginalised, e.g., young rural women and LGBTQIA+ communities, and those disproportionately impacted by climate change and conflict, have safe and affordable access to digital technologies;

8. We need more robust accountability and monitoring mechanisms to ensure the safeguarding of womxn and girls online
   

P.S

As always, if my thoughts this week struck a cord, piqued your interest, or you’d like to explore some of these ideas further or have questions, leave a comment and write to me HERE.

Useful resources

• UN Women Glossary: Gender and Technology

• Women's Guide to Cyber Safety