Foreword

Our global society has made tireless efforts for the advancement ofwomen, and enormous strides have been made to enhance gender equality. However, women are still mostly marginalized from social and economic rights. Furthermore, compared to the great progress in women’s rights, the societal recognition of women’s equality is still insufficient. To realize the third goal, “Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women,” of the UN Millennium Development Goals(MDGs), more global and regional cooperation is needed.

Acknowledging this fact, gender has been a cross-cutting issue and global society has made great efforts to develop specialized programs for women and various kinds of projects for women have been created. However, the numbers of gender experts or institutes that can conduct customized research or training for women are still not enough to fulfil all that is needed to empower women.

The Asia Pacific Women’s Information Network Center (APWINC), a research center at Sookmyung Women’s University in Korea dedicated to the area of “gender and ICT,” has played a pioneering role in promoting gender equality and empowerment for women by advancing women’s potential skills in the field of information and communication technology (ICT) throughout its 16-year history.

As a gender and ICT expert institute, APWINC has conducted research and training on women empowerment in collaboration with governments and international organizations. In 2010, as a part of ODA (Official Development Assistance) of the Ministry of Gender Equality & Family of Korea, APWINC implemented ‘e-Biz Training for Women’, which invited sixty women leaders from nineteen different countries all over the world. By analyzing the implemented strategies and core training modules of the ODA projects for women conducted by APWINC, it is expected that directions will be suggested as to how future projects can be better developed.

Under the title, “Korea’s Effort to Empower Women through ICT,”the APWIN Journal for 2010 features papers on two topics: strategies for ODA projects for women’s empowerment and special submissions.
We would like to thank all the contributors to this volume and give special thanks to Ms. Maria Melizza D. Tan for gladly sharing her successful experiences with the ICT misuse project in the Philippines.

This issue could not be completed without help from the contributors. I express my appreciation to all of them.

Dong Ju Choi, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Asia Pacific Women’s Information Network Center,
Sookmyung Women’s University, Republic of Korea