Once and Future Action Network

Summary of S&T Recommendations in the Platform of Action of the Fourth UN World Conference on Women, Beijing, September 1995

Recommended actions to improve women's access to technologies, information and technical assistance (women entrepreneurs, farmers, fisheries producers)

• allocation of public expenditures
• develop government policies and programmes
• include actions to promote women's access to these technologies and assistance in structural adjustment programmes
• enact and implement legislation and administrative reforms
• increase the number of women extension workers providing technical assistance
• develop outreach programmes to inform low income and poor women in rural and remote areas
• include women's priorities in water and sanitation programmes and energy projects
• improve the development of technologies relevant to women.

Measures to improve women's access to science education and technical training

• include such measures in government policies and programmes
• eliminate barriers for women to tertiary S&T education
• make available gender sensitive professional school counselling
• include scientific and technological knowledge in the definition of literacy
• make information on training programmes widely available
• adapt curricula and teaching materials to include girls and women and make S&T training more attractive to girls and women
• increase the number of women in educational policy and decision making positions
• use communication technologies and the mass media to reach rural women in remote areas
• provide funding for special S&T training programmes for women
• provide vocational training for refugees, women with disabilities and otherwise disadvantaged women
• provide special retraining programmes in new technologies.

Women's access to non-traditional employment

• provide re-education for unemployed women
• provide skill training in non-traditional fields
• provide incentives to enterprises to provide vocational training in non-traditional areas

Gender sensitive health research

• incorporate courses on women's health in medical school curricula
• promote research programmes for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of women-specific health problems
• provide support to research on appropriate reproductive technologies
• increase the number of female health researchers and scientists
• monitor genetic research from the perspective of women's health.

Recognition of women's indigenous knowledge

• acknowledge and encourage beneficial traditional health care
• link traditional and indigenous knowledge with modern medicine
• support the economic activities of indigenous women, taking into account their traditional knowledge

Strengthen the position of women scientists and technologists

• recognize and encourage the contribution of research by women scientists and technologists
• encourage women to pursue scientific and technological careers
• restructure recruitment and career-development programmes to encourage increased participation of women in scientific and technological careers.

Reduce excessive military expenditures (implicitly including military research)

• reduce military expenditures and reallocate funds for basic needs
• promote technology transfer and scientific research in the area of mine clearance.

The impact and potential of new (information) technologies

• train women to make greater use of information technologies
• involve women in decision making regarding the development of new technologies.

Women's role in natural resource management and the impact of environmental degradation on women's lives

• encourage the effective protection and sharing of the benefits arising from the use of the knowledge, innovations and practices of women of indigenous and local communities
• identify and promote environmentally sound technologies
• integrate a gender perspective in the design and implementation of resource management mechanisms and production techniques
• increase the number of women scientists and technical advisers involved on environmental planning and programming
• take gender impact into consideration in the work of the UN Commission on Science and Technolology for Development (UNCSTD) and other UN bodies
• support research on gender impact of environmental degredation and hazards.

Compiled by Ilse Marks, UN Development Fund for Women.

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For more information, contact:
Sophia Huyer
Gender, Science and Development Programme
39 Spadina Road, Toronto, Ontario M5R 2S9, Canada
Tel (416) 926-7570
Fax (416) 926-9481
email: shuyer@ifias.ca