Academy Award-winning actress and part time archer Geena Davis is at it again with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
The star of such hit movies as Thelma and Lousie and a League of Their Own, is asking the ITU to offer more broadband opportunities to women and girls.
The ITU’s special envoy for women and girls for technology was in New York yesterday to address the ITU’s Broadband Commission for Digital Development. At the sixth meeting, Davis asked the ITU to set up a special focus group on gender that would seek new ways for broadband networks to empower girls and women in education, healthcare, and climate monitoring. She also asked for better pricing and more tools to spur entrepreneurship.
In a prepared statement, Davis said: “Broadband is having a transformational impact on the media and entertainment industry, but its importance reaches much further than that…Broadband will be key to meeting the Millennium Development Goals, providing women with the means to educate themselves and their children; improve their own health and the health of their families and communities; start their own businesses; keep themselves safe; and innovate to build and shape the future they want. This Commission can play a powerful advocacy role by speaking out strongly for the greater engagement of girls and women in the digital revolution taking place all around us.”
Davis’ call to action was well received by the ITU which immediately agreed to establish a special working group on gender and technology with a specific focus on how to better engage and empower girls. The working group will be headed by Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Program. It received a spontaneous donation of $1 million from Commissioner Reza Jafari, with several members of the commission agreeing to prepare a special report on opportunities and barriers for girls and women, to be presented at the next meeting of the Commission in Mexico City in March 2013.
