DNA

Islamabad, Dec 17: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), in collaboration with UNESCO Pakistan, hosted a consultative workshop in Lahore for the development of digital gender inclusion strategy.

The workshop, held at PTA’s Lahore Zonal Office, was the second of a series of five consultative workshops being organized to collect multi-stakeholder experts’ input for a strategy to reduce digital gender divide in Pakistan. The workshop was conducted by Ms. Sadaf Khan, UNESCO consultant. Experts from various stakeholder groups including Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), telecom operators, academia, and digital gender rights groups participated in the workshop.

The objective is to ensure that the gender inclusion strategy is responsive to the needs of the people and can be effectively integrated into the systems that are already in place.  This strategy will help PTA to coordinate a holistic effort, with other public and private sector stakeholders, to tackle various barriers to women’s use of mobile and ICTs. Last month, the workshop was conducted in Peshawar and the next workshops are planned to be held in Karachi, Quetta and Islamabad.