The forum focused on bringing awareness about various policies and schemes related to women entrepreneurship to foster more female business leaders.
The CMAI association and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN Body, organised the “International Women’s Empowerment Forum” today in New Delhi, with the focus on ‘Indian Girls in ICT 2019’ and ‘Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls’.
This initiative was conducted as part of a global movement to raise awareness on empowering and encouraging girls and young women to consider studies and careers in ICTs. The initiative is aimed towards encouraging girls and young women to be an active player in the ICT landscape and become valuable entrepreneurs and contributors to the future in technology.
Objectives of the forum
The forum, partly inspired by the “Beti Bachao Beti Padhao” initiative of Govt. of India, aimed to encourage and uplift the involvement of women in the technological and industrial landscape – especially in the information and communications technology (ICT) domain. That included motivating women to choose careers in ICT as well as creating groundwork for establishment of women-driven industrial and trade units, driving more women in top corporate roles, shattering the barriers of gender-bias in the work environment. The forum also talked about bringing awareness about various policies and schemes related to women entrepreneurship to become business leaders or drive startups.
Ashish Srivastava, joint secretary, Ministry of Women and Child Welfare addressed, “We need to think about what the government is thinking and if their thought process in alignment with the progress we seek to achieve. The parameters we need to look at to achieve true women empowerment include safety and security, social enablers and institutional enablers that will look at health, education and access to technology.”
Addressing the challenges faced by women across various sectors of the economy including corporate, government, civil society or industrial environment was a major focus area of the discussion. It encouraged inclusive interaction of men and women together and discussed about creating a platform for women for discussions and exchange of views.
Special programs will be devised for imparting education girls from school level and arranging for hands-on skill and entrepreneurial skills development for women in jobs and business. Special schemes for rural, less privileged or physically challenged women also attracted focus in the forum.
TEMA chairman emeritus and CMAI president N.K.Goyal said in an exclusive interaction, “As a first step towards empowering women in true sense, TEMA has employed 37 women out of its total work strength of 40. To further strengthen this resolve, he said, “TEMA is urging women across any functional or interest area – food, textile, technology, fashion, or any field – to share their achievements in their respective fields, in form of short videos of about 2.5 minutes, on various platforms of TEMA. We will go through the videos and shortlist candidates for our special training programs”.
He said that this process has already helped them identify 40 candidates who they have deployed to the US for training in cybersecurity.
More support by India
The Indian government has been very agile in bringing policies, regulations and investments to help provide women with the necessary infrastructure to scale up the ladder in life. While a significant percentage of women, especially in the rural parts of the country, are still deprived of proper education or livelihood, the Indian government has been instrumental to bring forth the changes.
Focusing on women empowerment during budgets has become a mainstay for governments. The latest interim Budget 2019 also included the subject as the Centre announced an investment of Rs.1330 crore (nearly Rs.174 crore higher from estimates of the previous year) to improve security and empowerment of women. With more initiatives and forums aiming towards strengthening the female population of the country, India will surely find more leaders and talents who will take the nation to newer heights.
