Urging women to concentrate on moving forward rather than “up,” Ping Fu, chief strategy officer for 3D Systems, described life as a mountain range that needs to be scaled. “Forget about this glass ceiling stuff,” she said at a May 29 Washington, D.C., panel discussion on women, democracy and technology.

Using information technology to boost democracy is not new; in Poland in the 1980s, cassette tapes of speeches by Solidarity leader Lech Walesa were passed from factory to factory, delivering a message of openness and freedom. What is new is the speed and breadth at which information travels, as evidenced by the impact Twitter and Facebook had in spreading the story of the Arab Spring.

When Ilirjana Gafurri, a political party activist in Peja, Kosovo, won a seat on her local council six years ago, she became an advocate for issues such as better health care and women’s equality in her community. But Gafurri had to struggle to make her voice heard in the predominantly male body, where women are often perceived as being passive or not as qualified.

Since the 1986 fall of the Duvalier dictatorship, Haiti has struggled as it moves toward democracy. The country is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, and the public is frustrated with the limited degree of progress made in addressing issues such as poverty, public safety and corruption, which threaten the country’s political stability.

Presidential elections are scheduled for July in Mali, and are viewed by Malians as a major step in the country’s recovery from a coup that toppled the government in March 2012 and subsequent armed incursions led by Islamist rebels. Although major cities such as Timbuktu and Gao have been reconquered by Malian and allied forces, parts of the north are still controlled by rebel fighters.  Approximately 400,000 Malians have fled the area.