I salute the new generation of girls in Information and communications technology.
I salute the passion and energy.
I salute the optimism and drive.
I salute the understanding of equity, equality and inclusion.
We are a long way from when I set out to bring the fields of media and academia together each of which existed in clearly defined silos and oblivious to the approaching tsunami of technological innovations that were about to flood the distance between them.
I touch on the trauma and triumph over this in my biopic One Night To Bloom in the new creative genre, The MultiMedia MicroEpic. One Night to Bloom is a tribute to the intergenerational inspiration, influence that instigated by drive to advance the education of women and girls, the marginalised and the underprivileged.
A Tale of Three World Summits
A decade separates each of the Beijing Summit on Women and Development of 1985, the first Rio Summit on Environment and Development of 1995 and the World Summit on Information Society of 2005.
The three framed my growth and development, one of the few individuals precariously straddling both the fields of media and academic.
Engendering Development Actions
The Beijing Summit on Women and Development marked my entry into media and thrust into academia concurrently. My body of journalism and subsequent research and development actions represent the injection of engendered perspective on interpretation of policy, planning and development actions that inspired my conceptualisation of the Women Agents of Change initiative for the Commonwealth Caribbean.
Environment Friendly and Climate Change
The Rio Summit on Environment and Development benchmarked my scrutiny, analyses and awareness raising on development when with like minded individuals we also launched our own platform for environmentally friendly actions that saw the creation of dedicated laws and governance instruments including Ministry of the Environment and the Environmental Management Authority and an umbrella civil society entity to watchdog progress. This body of knowledge of the environmental challenges, opportunities, strengths and weaknesses of the CARICOM and the Small Island States of the Caribbean informed my more recent actions to restore respect for and value of the knowledge contained in our systems in shaping global policy agenda – We are BOSS (big ocean sustainable states) and the lobby for disaggregation of statistics of the region to better inform policy which is now seeing fruition.
I was driven to reflect on these actions as I spoke with participants in the Google Women Tech Makers and Caribbean Women in Tech International Womens’ Day Summit.
Knowledge Society
The World Summit on Information Society marked my thrust into retrieving lost knowledge as a means to restore respect while breaking the silos and bridge the gaps between academia and media by utilising traditional/culture-based tools along with conventional media and new information technologies to level the playing field for equal participation of civil society, and with them the marginalised – women, youth, indigeneous, rural and underprivileged – in leadership and decision-making while working to strengthen public-private and NGO mechanisms through the newly emerging field of communications and development. It was a brave new world of communications for development that has its core ally in the participatory tools of information and communication technologies.
Building bridges – formal to non-formal media and education
When I shed the formal newsroom and formal academia to hep shape the newly emerging field of communications for development by challenging the established boundaries of each and championing the convergence of these three knowledge streams, I seemed to be speaking a language yet unknown.
What I envisioned as the need for convergence and synergies was still treated as wishful and alien to the solid institutional barriers that resisted the challenge to become relevant to the unfurling world.
That the conventional bureaucracies of media and academic remained sluggish and slow to respond represent the challenge and frustration of trying to blaze a trail into a pathway for change.
Imperial Silos
Fortified into imperial silos separate and apart, they remained steadfast in resisting change, denying difference and spurring hybridity and diversity, it meant the deny not only themselves, but the society and region the knowledge, experience, strength and vision of those they exclude.
The same shortsightedness resulted as visioning, agenda setting, policy making, strategising for education, culture and media – the three custodians of knowledge and know-how – were each kept separate and apart, conducted in separate rooms and forums and articulated in isolated documents, agendas and action plans.
It would take the Pandemic to remove the blindfolds. The Pandemic has challenged not just the health systems but one by one, every social system, concrete and intangible, are feeling its onslaught.
Now, in the aftermath of the first waves of the Pandemic, the walls are fast crumbling. From the cracks the dawn for change beckons the next generation of girls in ICTs.
It means that every sector in every society must return to the drawing board to redefine its path forward into the Post Pandemic Future.
A Word on WSIS – A Flashback on FastForward
I was tasked with developing a blueprint for engendering national ICT policy by the Gender Caucus of the 2005 World Summit on Information Society. As I knew from my media experience that all global actions are first local, I turned my attention to the newly minted national policy on ICT, Fastforward.
My study, Rewind Fastforward was presented to WSIS as a blueprint for engendering policy actions critiquing and developing recommendations for gender-friendly ICT policy.
Pronouncing the national policy ‘gender blind’, with a 21-point action agenda targeting all stakeholders, Rewind Fastforward detailed the steps needed to be taken for inclusion and engagement with women and girls and to address the many challenges facing their safe and effective entry into the digital world.
It pinpointed the many gaps and loopholes by which not only women, but also rural, marginalised communities were overlooked in the grand machinery of a technology-based society. As predicted, in the ensuing time, the vision in Fastforward was largely still born and its successor policy Fastforward II of 2017 inherits and replicates its initial oversights.
The 2005 WSIS Summit declaration envisioned the capacity of the emerging technological revolution for inclusion of those normally left out of the equation – women, youth, indigeneous, marginalised, but national policies, as ours, did not. And as is recognized in all major international studies on the subject, education remained in its ivory tower, preaching inclusion but practicing exclusion
Today, the lag and gaps we experience is because of the failures of establishing such necessary foundations for equity, equality, engagement and inclusion. The traditional media world has crumbled. The impact of the Pandemic is showed up all the cracks and crevices in the archaic facades of education and diversity is the trumpet call on the lips of every planner and policy maker.
Tomorrow’s world is now speaking the language that was alien to most when I set out at the turn of the millennium and the century to connect education media and culture and gender in development and the pandemic has opened our eyes to the necessity of it.
And so I salute the growing numbers of women and girls, and the boys and men who are now on board in shaping this future into the Post Pandemic World.
Dr Kris Rampersad is an international sustainable developmental consultant. Find out more here
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Also find out how you may help in the preparation and development for multimedia the integrated research, analyses and documentation of the Caribbean and Small Island States:
The Beijing Platform for Action – 35 Years On
From Rio to Glasgow – Sustainable Development and the Caribbean since The First World Summit on Environment and Development
Fastforwarding the WSIS Agenda – Engendering Women and Girls in ICTs – The SIDS Caribbean Challenge.