Governance
Who is responsible for the administration and policy coordination of the internet?
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which acts as the internet's central coordinating committee, has been embroiled in debates about representation of countries (currently the United States dominates) and organizations (commercial vs. nonprofit). But gender plays a role here as well. Few women have registered as voting members of ICANN. According to Emerson Tiller, a professor of business law at the University of Texas at Austin, in North America, women represent 9.9% of ICANN registrants, whereas men represent 78.2% (11.8% did not report their gender).3 Diffusion of the internet into the daily lives of Americans has proceeded at a quicker pace than have other communications technologies. During the past decade, we have seen women go from a paltry 10% of internet users to more than half of the users in the United States. Is this equity? Yes, there is reason for optimism about these numbers, but it is even more optimistic to envision the next 10 years as an era of truer equity for women online-in content creation, education, civic engagement, policymaking, and governance.