WEB 2.0 : Tools for Global Women Empowerment

Web 2.0 is a web application that facilitates participatory information sharing and collaboration on the World Wide Web. The tools of web 2.0 has three parts namely; rich internet application, service oriented application and social media ( for podcasting, blogging, tagging, contributing, bookmarking and networking).

The excitement of using Web 2.0 has created a virtual community in a global village. It mutually maximizes collective intelligence, crowd sourcing and adds value to each participant by formalizing and creating dynamic information sharing.

Today you can practically perform the following on web:
• Share photos.
• Share videos with others.
• Update people with email.
• Engage with online communities.
• Communicate with many people and use their networks.
• Track issues relevant to ones campaign.

These listed performances have added these values to our daily living:

Values created for using Web 2.0:
 Disaster Management.
 eGoverment- Citizen participation.
 International partnership.
 Mobile Banking for grassroot.
 National Digital Strategy.
 Digital Education.
 Empowering Women

Web 2.0 also enhanced women empowerment by allowing the :
i. Building networks of relationships between different groups in society ( for example:
www.confidencecoalition.org )
ii. Fighting of discrimination, exclusion and excessive inequalities.
iii. Enabling of upward social mobility.

Women are the key resources in today’s based economies as greater participation in ICT would lead to more innovation and economic progress in the world .
There are also numerous examples of women gathering online to create virtual communities that help to advance towards a shared goal or solve issues pertinent to everyday life. These online networks manifest themselves through existing social networking tools such as twitter or facebook or can take the form of online discussion forum.

The limitations or challenges of this network to women are:
 No equitable Access.
 Language Problems (Majority are limited to English).
 Culture (Negative about women and girls/too modern).
 Lack of adequate skill/Low skills level.
 Affordability (Airtime/internet costs).
 Infrastructure (Connectivity problems.

Therefore, for greater network of women and global empowerment of women, every Government should find ways to ensure that women have access to Web 2.0 tools and have the necessary skills to do so. And to facilitative positive change, it is necessary to address existing gender gaps with respect to access to and benefit from new technologies.