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CSW67 Side Event - Leveraging Public-Private Commitment for Women’s Greater Access to Technology and Education

Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, in partnership with UN Women India organized a high-level panel discussion, “Leveraging Public-Private Commitment for Women’s Greater Access to Technology and Education” at the United Nations Headquarters on 13 March 2023.

The event was organized on the margins of the 67th session of the Commission on Status of Women. The priority theme of the session is “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls”.

H.E. Ms. Ruchira Kamboj, Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations delivered the Opening Address. Other eminent panelists were, Ms Anita Bhatia, Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women, Dr Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals, Ms Melissa Selcher, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, LinkedIn and Ms Nina Nair, Senior Vice President & Human Resources Development Head - India & Americas, [24]7.ai. Ms. Susan Ferguson, Country Representative, UN Women India, moderated the event.

In her opening address, Ambassador Kamboj highlighted the Government of India’s citizen-centric digital initiatives with a greater focus to enable access for women to finance, credit, technology and employment. She spoke on two major initiatives, the Digital India programme and the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM) trinity that have, inter alia, shown the transformational capacity of technology to provide impetus to women’s empowerment and sustainable development. She mentioned that during the pandemic, these initiatives had facilitated direct benefit transfer to nearly 200 million women.

Ambassador Kamboj underlined the importance of forging public-private partnerships among educational systems, governments and private sector organisations working in emerging technologies such as 3D technologies, artificial intelligence, nano-technology, robotics and gene therapy is of vital importance. She highlighted successful examples of Public-Private-Partnership in India for promoting women empowerment especially economic empowerment.

The panel discussion was organized as a part of the ‘India Roundtables' at the United Nations. The roundtables, being organized to commemorate India@75, will showcase India’s achievements in various areas of development, including women empowerment, financial inclusion, social development, climate action and many more.