UNIFEM, the women's fund at the United Nations, recently launched a gender-equalizing initiative in Jordan, entitled Achieving E-Quality in the IT Sector, funded by Cisco Systems Inc.
The program, which is carried out in collaboration with the Jordanian Ministry of Education, seeks to enable female students to build up their technological knowledge with demand-driven networking skills and to ensure a gender sensitive policy to increase their competitiveness in the labor market.
The UNIFEM-Cisco program will also work to link up the academy graduates with the job market in cooperation with the private sector. Ten academic and training institutions were selected to run a Cisco networking program. Following a training course, students receive the CCNA certification, which enables them to design, build and maintain computer networks.
The program also includes an action-oriented research on the status of women in the Jordanian ICT sector and policy lobbying activities to impart gender-sensitive policies, to remove impediments hindering women's access to the job market.
UNIFEM's Gender and ICT strategy for the Arab States realizes the importance of the role ICT plays in generating successful economic activities, providing women with access to information, education and new skills and bridging the gaps existing between men and women. The first activity of the UNIFEM-Cisco partnership was a Training of Trainers workshop that was held at the Balqa Applied University last August.
UNIFEM, whose mandate is to empower women economically and politically worldwide, has identified the Information Technology as part of its 2000-2003 Business Plan. Growing industry sectors are identified as platforms for integrating women into the high end of the work value-chain. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
