This issue of Agenda focuses on the intersections between gender and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). As an organisation working precisely at this intersection, Women'sNet is privileged to be associated with the publication of this important issue of the journal. We argue that, as feminists and women's rights activists, it is imperative that we engage with ICTs - from the level of policy and regulation to content development - to ensure that women benefit from the ICT revolution.

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Agenda editor Kristin Palitza spoke to three African women who are professionally involved in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector and passionate about helping women to gain access to new technologies. Robynne Erwin from South Africa, Jane Godia from Kenya and Goretti Amuriat from Uganda discussed via teleconference the successes, challenges and barriers to gendering ICTs throughout the continent.

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This briefing describes an Information Communication Technology (ICT) project in which academics from five geographically dispersed tertiary institutions collaborated in the design and implementation of an online teaching module on women's health and well-being. The module used the transformative possibilities offered by ICT to enable students from a variety of geographic and cultural contexts to collectively explore the concepts of women's health and well-being. This briefing examines how this web-based module enabled the authors to bring students from South Africa, Uganda, Jamaica and Israel together in an online learning environment and outlines the role of ICT in designing the module as a collaborative learning space. The experiences of participating academics and students, particularly those within the African context, are presented.

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This focus assesses Information Communication Technology (ICT) policies in southern African countries, namely Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It examines whether countries have ICT policies in place, whether these address gender realities in the region and what actions have been taken since policies have been implemented. The author argues that having an ICT policy within any given country is essential to improving access to ICTs by disadvantaged groups. The paper shows that gendered ICT policies will go a long way in reducing inequalities between the sexes and also between Africa and the rest of the world. It offers an analysis of how these policies improve women's access to ICTs within various sectors, such as commerce, agriculture, education, governance, health and tourism. The focus argues, however, that it is not enough to look at ICT policy in isolation but important to consider what mechanisms governments have put into place to ensure that women have access to and make effective use of ICTs. 

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This profile focuses on the work of E-Knowledge for Women in Southern Africa (EKOWISA), a Zimbabwean non-governmental organisation that encourages communities to use Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) for livelihood development. The paper interrogates the assumption that ICTs empower women, the meaning of empowerment as well as the particular challenges to ICT access in rural areas (Marcelle, 2000) based on EKOWISA's Community ICT project. 

Harvard graduate student Paula Goldman stumbled across an idea one morning - to send an internet question out to the world: ‘What defines your generation of women?' The idea gathered pace. Out of some 3,000 responses, the international editorial team picked 105 submissions from women living in 57 countries, including some well-known activists, artists, athletes, writers, musicians, photographers and community organisers.

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Feminist researchers and writers have long been concerned with the role of the media in constructing or challenging current states of gender relations. A number of recent, gendered South African media studies have been applied to critique the low representation of women in all areas of the news media. These studies have also critiqued the existence of blatant as well as subtle gender stereotypes in the South African news media (Louw Morna, 2005).

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This paper discusses the experiences of eight non-ordained women in a parish of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (CPSA), situated in the Cape Town Diocese of South Africa. The aim of this study is twofold: firstly, to discuss the ways in which patriarchy affects the interviewed participants of the non-ordained ministry and, secondly, to describe the journey of the Tamar/gender desk1, which strives to gender-sensitise the church.

I am a free woman who has broken the chains that Indian society has placed on women for centuries. I savour the sweet taste of freedom that many of my friends and family yearn for. I am 21 years old, and already I'm an independent career woman, and my father and brothers treat me with the dignity and respect I deserve. But sadly, some Indian women are trapped into submissiveness, and their struggle to break free continues.