Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outlined the benefits of the mobile channel for empowering women in the developing world. Following on from Secretary Clinton, Cherie Blair highlighted key findings from the report 'Women and Mobile: A Global Opportunity', which was jointly created by the GSMA and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, and authored by Vital Wave Consulting. The report, the first detailed global study of its kind, shows that 300 million women in developing countries are missing out on what mobile can enable. By extending the benefits of mobile phone ownership to more women, a host of social and economic goals can be achieved. There is a strong incentive for the private sector to lend their support as closing the mobile phone gender gap represents a US$13 billion incremental, annual revenue opportunity for mobile operators worldwide.
The GSMA mWomen Programme will address the key barriers to women's access to mobile phones, including total cost of ownership, technical literacy, and cultural barriers to adoption. The vision of the programme is that by increasing access to mobile connectivity and services, women living on less than US$2 per day will achieve a greater sense of security, independence, economic opportunity and connection with the world outside their homes. This in turn will lead to greater empowerment and control over their lives and those of their families. The programme is aligned with the UN Millennium Development Goals, particularly MDG 3 on Gender Equity, and ECOSOC's renewed focus on the need for greater investment in women and girls (June 2010) with the dedicated support of mWomen champions Cherie Blair, Ambassador Melanne Verveer, UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, President of Liberia Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Judith Rodin President Rockefeller Foundation.
The key components of the GSMA mWomen programme include: offering technical assistance, with activities focused on catalysing the mobile industry to work collectively to close the gender gap and track progress, including development of business cases for mobile phone operators; and providing value-added services - life-changing services in the areas of health, education, finance and entrepreneurship, to be delivered by mobile phone operators in partnership with the international development community.
The GSMA mWomen Programme will address the key barriers to women's access to mobile phones, including total cost of ownership, technical literacy, and cultural barriers to adoption. The vision of the programme is that by increasing access to mobile connectivity and services, women living on less than US$2 per day will achieve a greater sense of security, independence, economic opportunity and connection with the world outside their homes. This in turn will lead to greater empowerment and control over their lives and those of their families. The programme is aligned with the UN Millennium Development Goals, particularly MDG 3 on Gender Equity, and ECOSOC's renewed focus on the need for greater investment in women and girls (June 2010) with the dedicated support of mWomen champions Cherie Blair, Ambassador Melanne Verveer, UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, President of Liberia Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Judith Rodin President Rockefeller Foundation.
The key components of the GSMA mWomen programme include: offering technical assistance, with activities focused on catalysing the mobile industry to work collectively to close the gender gap and track progress, including development of business cases for mobile phone operators; and providing value-added services - life-changing services in the areas of health, education, finance and entrepreneurship, to be delivered by mobile phone operators in partnership with the international development community.
To support the programme the GSMA has also launched the "mWomen Base of the Pyramid Apps Challenge". The challenge is sponsored by Vodafone and aims to stimulate activity to meet the significant demand for innovative app design and to provide original and fresh customised app solutions targeted at the specific needs of women in developing countries.
This global competition is open to all and offers the opportunity to create the ultimate app for women in developing countries. This is a two-tier competition; Tier 1 will be an app for a low-end device or feature phone and Tier 2 will be an app for smartphones. The winners will be announced at the 2011 GSMA Mobile World Congress, the mobile industry's premier event, hosted in Barcelona, at the official awards ceremony on Tuesday 15th February 2011.
Lee Epting, Content Services Director at Vodafone, said, "Vodafone has a great deal of experience and expertise in developing products and services for emerging markets, and I'm delighted that we have seized the opportunity to apply that to the mWomen Programme objectives. The Apps Challenge has been designed to stimulate innovative responses to the very real problem of how best to serve the 300 million women currently excluded from the social and personal empowerment of mobile telecommunications."
The prize will include:
+ US$10,000 to the winner of each tier (to be used to assist in creating, testing and commercialising the app), cash prize provided by Vodafone;
+ Entrance to Mobile World Congress 2011 for one team member of each winning tier, as well as flight and accommodation;
+ Opportunity to showcase the winning app at the mWomen Seminar at Mobile World Congress;
+ Opportunity to showcase the winning app at the next mWomen Working Group meeting of 20 mobile operators;
+ Exclusive access to a leading venture capital firm to assist in the development of the winning app; and
+ Exclusive access to a leading innovation and design company.
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