The Commission on the Status of Women held its sixty-seventh session from 6 to 17 March 2023 with a focus on "Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls."
The Commission on the Status of Women held its sixty-seventh session from 6 to 17 March 2023 with a focus on "Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls." During this event, International Land Coalition (ILC) organized a side event on 16th March 2023 to contribute to the discourse on securing women's rights to land and natural resources through technological innovation. The session aimed to improve recognition of women's land rights in Africa and promote the use of technology as a key tool for achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls.
ILC advocated for transformative approaches to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), empower women and girls, and secure their land rights. The session showcased how investment and use of technological innovation can yield disaggregated data for accountability in land governance and administration, SDG implementation, and facilitate women's economic justice and rights.
Panelists at the ILC Africa side event on 16th March 2023
The objectives of the side event were to share knowledge, experiences, and lessons learnt among regional and global actors on women's access to technology for advanced economic justice and resource rights, and to promote multi-stakeholder engagement and approaches to leverage technology for women-led organizations to enhance digital transformation in their work to advance women's rights.
During the side event, ILC members and significant partners of the Stand for Her Land Campaign shared interesting perspectives on the theme guided by their experiences on the ground. The discussions elicited thought-provoking insights that emphasized the need for women to have safe spaces to engage with technology to support their land rights. It was agreed that securing women's land rights has a ripple effect on promoting food security, biodiversity, and climate action. The speakers promoted the need for gender-transformative and people-centered technologies that are fit for purpose to enable the registration of land.
Participants at the ILC Africa side event during CSW67
Contextual analysis would be relevant in determining what works for women in different spaces they occupied - grassroots, indigenous communities, pastoralists, the urban slum dweller, among others. This would entail positioning women at the center of different transformations. One interesting reaction from the plenary session was how to address the financing question, which is a challenge in technological innovation and denies sustained actions in women's uptake of technology. For this, there was a common agreement on the need to build trust in grassroots communities and invest in them through financing in all spheres (resources, capacity building) to sustain processes.