Facebook Empowerment Panel at Digital Women Awards

The Facebook Empowerment Panel at the Digital Women Awards put the spotlight on using social media for social change - from helping enterprising women create value with small businesses to big campaigns that can envelope a movement. At the heart of the panel's objective was to get more women online.

The proportionality of women online in South Asia varies anywhere from 14 to 38 per cent reflecting on the need to get more women on to the internet and fixing the gap. Facebook has over 138 million monthly active users in India and it's putting women at the nucleus of their agenda to engage with them socially, help them use digital to promote and build small and medium enterprises and grow in digital numbers. Public Policy Director of Facebook in India, South and Central Asia Ankhi Das said, "About 25% of these are women and that's obviously a disappointing number to a lot of us because we really want those numbers to explode." Reinforcing that thought CSR India's Director Ranjana Kumari brought attention to the need for a nuanced and detailed understanding of the social factors that affect the gender gap today. Making policy changes and educating more women to bridge the gender gap online is among the objectives of the Women and Child Development Ministry.

Here's an engaging panel discussion with Ankhi Das of Facebook, Ranjana Kumari of CSR India and Lopmudra Mohanty of the Women & Child Development Ministry.

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