Association for Progressive Communications
Women's Networking Support Programme (APC-WNSP)

The origins of the APC Women's Networking Support Programme go back to 1993 in response to several convergent needs and demands from within the women's movement. The United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women - UNWCW and the rapid development of international communications technologies were key factors which gave rise to the Programme's beginning.

The APC Women's Programme team consists of women from more than 20 countries from North, South, East and West. They are women, groups and organisations working in the field of gender and ICT, who also actively support women's networking.

They are specialised in areas such as training, information facilitation, technical skills and policy issues, many of whom work on a voluntary basis. They have different backgrounds: they are activists on housing or environmental issues, women and health activists, librarians, journalists, or they work at for one of the APC member networks.

They are mostly experienced network users rather than trained ICT experts. More information about our Programme members can be found here.

The Mission of the Women's Networking Support Programme is to promote gender equity in the design, implementation, and use of information and communication technologies - with special focus on inequities based on women's social or ethnic background - through the provision of research, training, information, and support activities in the field of ICT policy, skills-sharing in the access and use of ICT, and women's network-building.

The goals of APWNSP are (1) to promote the consideration and incorporation of gender in ICT policy-making bodies and forums; (2) to initiate and implement research activities in the field of gender and ICT; (3)to advance the body of knowledge, understanding, and skills in the field of gender and ICT by implementing training activities; and (4)to facilitate access to information resources in the field of gender and ICT.

The WNSP reaches it's goals through implementation of activities and project emerging from our priority work areas: Research, Training, Policy and Advocacy, Information Facilitation, and Regional Networking Support.