This section examines why gender is important in strategy development – including how strategic risks and priorities are perceived, identified and assessed. An example project illustrates the steps involved in integrating gender when developing a national cybercrime strategy.
What do we mean by strategy development?
Strategy development looks at what already exists in-country by way of formal or informal cybercrime strategy, how this was developed, and what programmes/activities have been put in place to support the implementation of that strategy. This pillar explores how strategic risks and priorities are perceived, identified and assessed at the national level – particularly with regard to their impact – and the extent to which these are captured within a formal document (or documents), be this a cybercrime strategy, part of a cybersecurity strategy or other relevant documentation. Strategy development further includes the evaluation mechanisms in place to assess the effectiveness of the strategy’s delivery and communication.
Projects that focus on strategy development include (but are not limited to):
- supporting the development of a cybercrime strategy;
- implementing a cybercrime strategy;
- developing best practice recommendations for cybercrime strategies; and
- reviewing and assessing a cybercrime strategy.
Thinking about gender and strategy development
Gender is important for strategy development because decisions about how to design, build and use tools to respond to and/or mitigate the impacts of cybercrime have different effects on different people and communities. Globally, not only are women and other marginalized groups under-represented in the governance and regulation of ICTs, but gendered impacts are often overlooked.
Frequently, agencies or governments do not have the capacity or resources to meaningfully integrate gender analysis or expertise within their workflows, let alone to allow for sharing ideas, experience and best practice with other ministries or agencies. Increasing both capacity and resources can aid the development of better coordinated processes that tackle gender concerns as innate to cybercrime policy planning.
Frequently, agencies or governments do not have the capacity or resources to meaningfully integrate gender analysis or expertise within their workflows
In thinking about gender and national cybercrime strategies, policymakers need to ensure that silos among bodies such as local law enforcement, judiciary, national crime agencies, government departments and civil society organizations working on advancing human rights are broken down, and that narrow perspectives on what constitutes gender are challenged.
Key questions
Here are two key questions to consider when integrating gender into strategy development:
- What are the existing obligations to international commitments – such as the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – that seek to protect and promote the rights of women and other marginalized groups?
- What are the local social, political and cultural contexts, and what are the barriers to realizing the rights and security of women and other marginalized groups?
Example project: developing a national cybercrime strategy
This section uses an example project to show how gender can be integrated in strategy development. The example given considers the development of a national cybercrime strategy.
