It took people like my friend Perdida Houston, who’s now the Peace Corps’ Director in Chad, who went out and studied this and interviewed the women and traced how their position had declined as agriculture improved, to make us realize it.



It took people like my friend Perdida Houston, who’s now the Peace Corps’ Director in Chad, who went out and studied this and interviewed the women and traced how their position had declined as agriculture improved, to make us realize it.

It took people like my friend Perdida Houston, who’s now the Peace Corps’ Director in Chad, who went out and studied this and interviewed the women and traced how their position had declined as agriculture improved, to make us realize it.

Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke United States Representative to the United Nations Remarks before a Panel Sponsored by the Association for Women in Science on Beijing +5 - Let Everyone Play: Women Crossing the Digital Divide into the Future June 7, 2000



Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke United States Representative to the United Nations Remarks Beijing +5 - Let Everyone Play: Women Crossing the Digital Divide into the Future June 7, 2000

Nidhi, I am so grateful to you and your colleagues for inviting me this morning to speak on this subject. I want to thank the Association for Women in Science, Chell.com, and President Clinton’s Interagency Council on Women for organizing this event, and in particular, Cameron Chell and Kitty Didion, who put this event together. I also want to acknowledge Gisèle Yitamben of the Association pour le Soutien à la Femme Entrepeneur. She just explained to me that it’s "entrepreneur" not "entrepreneuse;" I think that’s worth noting in the French language, whose leadership has been vital to helping so many women acquire the tools they need.

Now let me also say a word on behalf of the UNDP since Mark Malloch Brown is not here – they do VERY important work in this field. Mark deserves a lot of credit for the e-development concept. Mark was one of the pioneers of the concept that Internet is an opportunity to reduce a gender differentiation, and to reach into the third world. Those of you who were at the microcredit session that UNIFEM held two days ago heard a very important statement, which is that the new technologies make microcredit more possible. All of you know that microcredit, which is one of the most important driving engines for women in the Third World, is something that every bank thinks is a total waste of time, on the simple grounds that it costs too much to process a $500 loan. It costs as much to process a $500 loan as a $500,000 loan, according to the banks. I don’t actually BELIEVE that, but that’s what the banks say. And by the way, I was a banker. My office was right across the street from here for ten years, so I can tell you that bankers say these things for a lot of different reasons. But Mark has pointed out that with the new technologies, that cost can drop very rapidly and processing can speed up. Five years ago at Beijing, there was no discussion of these issues.

The Beijing conference was and Beijing +5, for the most part, is focused on the traditional issues of the women’s movement – women’s empowerment, violence against women, rape as a tool of war, reproductive rights, pay inequalities, all the issues that have been on the forefront of the women’s agenda for the last thirty to forty years. All of these issues need to be addressed – continually and aggressively. Even in the United States, which is arguably the country that’s done the best (or one of the countries – I think that the Scandinavians have perhaps done better in some ways), all of these problems still exist, as we all know. In the Third World, they exist at a much higher level. But I think that this is a breakthrough to start discussing this issue. I predict that the next time you have conferences like this, you’ll have even more people at them.

Now, I want to make a point about women and development before I get to the digital divide. Twenty and thirty years ago, even more, back in the sixties, when the new agricultural technologies started to come into availability in the Third World, a very interesting thing happened. I saw this first-hand, because I was then working in Southeast Asia, and later in North Africa in the AID, and in the Peace Corps, and in the embassies. Nobody expected this to happen and I want to tell it to you before we get to the point here. Because of the digital divide it’s critically important that you understand this. When new technologies began arriving in Third World agriculture – and by new technology I mean things as simple as irrigation and fertilizer – exactly the opposite happened of what people expected. The gender divide increased, and instead of women being liberated and being given a better chance, the women really got the short end of the stick in every way. If there was any leisure time, the men absorbed it all. The women continued to work just as hard. If the international community, AID or the UN had an agricultural training program for new technologies, the men took all the positions in the classes. It was stunning and nobody saw it coming. Nobody – everybody said this is going to help women. 95% of all the benefits of the agricultural revolution in the Third World floated to men. So, women’s position, vis-à-vis men, actually got weakened in traditional rural economies. [To Ms. Yitamben] You’re from East Africa; you probably saw it firsthand. I was dumbfounded when I learned this. It was so extraordinary. I can tell you nobody saw it coming. It took people like my friend Perdida Houston, who’s now the Peace Corps’ Director in Chad, who went out and studied this and interviewed the women and traced how their position had declined as agriculture improved, to make us realize it. Still today, I think, only a tiny number of international aid officials understand what happened. There never has been a program designed to deal with it.

Okay, why do I begin our discussion of digital divide this way? Because it seems to me that the new technologies are a chance for women to close the gender gap in the Third World, but there is also a danger. Who is going to control the mouse or the computer terminal? It will be a big fight, and women are going to have to organize on their own, which is why I think that Gisèle’s program, ASAFE, in the Cameroon is so valuable; and you need more programs like that. Don’t let the men control the process. For explicit or implicit, conscious or subconscious reasons they’re going to go out – and I’m not saying this is intentional sexism in every case (only about 90% of them, the other 10% is inadvertent, but the practical effect is the same). If men control who goes to conferences on the use of new technologies, men are going to give them to their friends, and they’re not going to invite women. So you’ve got to keep doing things like ASAFE, you’ve got to do them. I hope you’ll be kind to a few of the men you leave behind in the dust. But don’t kid yourself: the new technologies are an opportunity but they’re also a threat. What happened to rural women with agriculture could happen here too. I think it’s less likely. Women are better organized; they’re more aware of the situation and the structure. By definition, these technologies should reach more educated people and therefore you should be more aggressive and more preemptive.

But it will happen, and the kind of comments I got coming into the General Assembly hall on the first day, one of the most distinguished ambassadors in the UN -- and NOT from an Arab country – came up to me and said, "Why are you going into that meeting? That’s a women’s meeting." You know, I was stunned. I was just stunned. But, because I believe as President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton do that these aren’t women’s issues, these are human issues, and we all benefit if women benefit. Those of you who have participated in the larger conference uptown or have been out there have seen this electricity in the air, and I hope you can spread it to the digital revolution. What we hope to do here this week is to work on eliminating these disparities, or at least reducing them. This will be impossible as long as such a disproportionate number of women remain on the other side of the digital divide. No country, not even the United States, is immune from this. The members of the Association for Women In Science understand this very well. President Clinton and Vice President Gore have made a real point of this. President Clinton spoke about the digital divide in his State of the Union message this year – the first time any President has mentioned that phrase in a joint session of Congress. He held the first digital divide summit in White House history last year, bringing together high technology CEOs, civil rights leaders, and education and non-profit leaders. Two months ago, the President brought together 400 companies and non-profit organizations to launch an national call for action in the United States, and Bill Daley, our Secretary of Commerce, who’s our point person on this project, along with the President and Vice President Gore, have really worked on it.

Everyone jokes about the Vice President’s invention of the Internet. The truth is that he never claimed that he invented the Internet. But what he does claim, and he’s absolutely right on this, is that he was among the very first public officials to start seeing its potential and to support it. He’s not going to let up on this at all, because he, both Vice President Gore and the President and this administration, really believe in making the Internet a tool for education and empowerment.

So we need a call to action, not only in the United States, but globally. We have to extend this battle overseas, and I hope all of you will keep in touch with each other, and keep working on it. This event really is evidence that the process has begun. Corporations are beginning to get the message. Corporate America must embrace the whole world as its community. Cameron Chell’s work is an example for all of us, as you’ll hear in a moment. Last year, the administration launched the "Internet for Economic Development Initiative," to help developing countries. The initiative is working now in many countries. Twelve where it’s already up and functioning are: India, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, Bulgaria, Egypt, Morocco, Ghana, Guinea, Uganda, South Africa, and Mozambique. There are some results already. Guinea is the first country in Africa to extend high-speed Internet access to its secondary cities.

AID is now using those ines to help track small-enterprise loans to thousands of Guinean women. In Ghana, the Peace Corps has helped women artisans establish a website. In Uganda, AID has provided computers, Internet portals, and training to connect a Kampala-based organization of professional women with a women’s organization in northern Uganda to facilitate information-sharing on health, business development, and on educational issues. This helps thousands of Ugandan women. One of them, Helen Motono, tells us that she uses the Internet to sell handmade baskets, and spends the proceeds to help children orphaned by AIDS: an extraordinary but typical example of how a traditional lifestyle can be merged with the Internet in a way that enhances that lifestyle. I might add, although it’s not in my prepared remarks, that if this works, it will keep people in, it will keep people from going into the bedumvilles, and slums, and faveias of the big cities, because they’ll be able to be more effective economically in their traditional settings. I think the preservation of traditional societal structures is critically important to help reduce the breakdown in societies and families.

Miss Motono recently wrote Vice President Gore, and I quote: "For our grandmothers and our aunts, who are burdened with the responsibility of caring for these orphans, access to the Internet is the only way to reach the global market, and make real income from their handicrafts." We’re leapfrogging centuries if somebody making handicrafts uses the Internet. All the intermediate phases of economic development, which we all studied in college, are eliminated. A person goes on doing what the traditional society had been doing, but uses a modern tool for marketing. It is a remarkable opportunity. It’s not what the big entrepreneurial people have in mind – they’re thinking of E-bay and Amazon.com - but if it works, it works, and that’s why the people in this panel are here – other than myself (I’m an amateur at this, at doing such important work).

That’s why today’s announcement of cooperation between Chell .com and ASAFE to provide Internet access to 3,000 women, entrepreneurs and artisans in Cameroon, is so important. Of course, no single institution or country, no single program can ever bridge the digital divide itself. That’s why our government supports Mark Malloch Brown and the UNDP, why we encourage partnerships like the one between Chell.com and ASAFE, the Cisco-UNDP project, and many others. At next month’s G8 summit in Okinawa, we hope to have an agreement to renew our commitment on this effort, including a G8 working group to share information and promote cooperation, foster private enterprise leadership, and encourage various product projects.

Even while we work on the great future, the past burdens us. Even this morning, the Rwandans and the Ugandans are fighting outside Kisingani, and we have the war in the Horn, and we have south Lebanon, and all of these, plus of course Sierra Leone, are all at critical junctures; so I’ll have to get back uptown and work on these issues. But what you’re working on in the long-term, that is much more, and if successful, can reduce the chances of these conflicts. I congratulate you on doing this. We need more innovative, energetic leaders, like Chell.com and Cisco, and sustained advocacy from groups like the Association for Women in Science and Women’s Learning Partnership. We need active support from groups like ASAFE, and we need the continued commitment of those of you who are here today – the women, and the occasional man (I see a few of you out there), who are on the front lines of this issue, day in and day out.

This morning’s meeting I hope will serve as a call to action. The partnerships reflected here today by the panelists on my left should serve as an example. I hope this event will galvanize conversation and cooperation and action across these professional fields. If the Internet and the modern communications techniques are about networking electronically, that networking starts and ends with people, and every once in a while, you’ve got to get together – not in a virtual reality chat room – but in the flesh. For that reason, I’m particularly grateful. I know all of you have come down to this part of Manhattan this morning to launch this discussion and Nidhi, I thank you so much for doing this here; you’re an inspiration to us all. Thank you.

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