IT and women: Not made for each other?

Frederick Noronha

ICT debates till date have largely tended to be gender-blind. Amidst all the hype surrounding the catch-all phrase ‘Digital Divide’, the concerns and specific problems faced by one half of humanity—while trying to leverage ICTs—is often overlooked. More so in South Asia, where only limited resources are being devoted to studying how ICTs affect one-fifth of the world’s population. In fact there seem to be just a handful of scholars and gender activists studying this perspective. Statistics and in-depth studies seem hard to come by. In such a context, academic and research scientist Usha Sharma’s book ‘Women Empowerment Through Information Technology’ gives some significant pointers on how IT benefits and job opportunities seem to have circumvented women in developing countries.

Women Empowerment Through Information Technology Author: Usha Sharma Publisher: Authorspress Price: Rs 550

“In India,” Sharma reminds us, “all electronic media, ranging from satellite television to the Internet, are accessible only to the privileged classes and cater almost exclusively to male information and entertainment needs and desires.” If this is the case, what is the situation with ICTs?

Reasons for limited access to IT

One of the first excluding factors is cost—which affects all sections of the poor—but women more than men. For instance: In Bangladesh, the cost of hooking up to the Internet could feed a family for a year.

Sharma points to other factors that have kept women from availing of IT benefits: “The geographic location of public Internet centres has also restricted women’s access to information technology in developing countries because they are not as mobile as men in most societies. When Internet centres are located in unsafe neighbourhoods or at a great distance from residential communities, women are less likely to frequent them. Beyond safety issues, IT access for women can be inhibited when offered in settings and institutions that women are unlikely to frequent.”

Lack of local-level statistics

But until we, in South Asia, are able to define the problem more precisely, it will be difficult to understand better ways of coping with it. For instance, how does Internet usage among women vary across Indian states, and what are the innovative uses it’s already being put to? For example, we have information on the total number of women Internet users in different countries: 1 million in Brazil, 6 million in China and 4.5 million in Russia. However, such relevant local-level statistics are in short supply here. Sharma points out that gender-specific data is also lacking in terms of ICT and telecommunications. Global figures are easier to come by.

The author also raises issues like access to IT training for women, illiteracy—more common among women than men, the growing sex industry on the Net that cuts very differently for women and men, the domination of Internet global bodies like ICANN by men, and the fact that women in the Third World are still not actively involved in the production of Internet content, software programs, design, inventions and hardware technology.

Comprehensive effort, but lacking in some areas

While Sharma’s description of women in the world of ICT-related work is lacking in both critical analysis and specific details, her analysis of the pitfalls in the ICT training field is quite comprehensive. (She talks extensively about the use of ICT training to perpetuate traditional roles; equating ICT mastery

with masculinity; clustering ICT-trained women in lower-paying technology jobs; and providing additional training as an additional burden on women’s time.)

She offers links for women (and men) interested in gender concerns. One only wishes these had a more precise set of links (in terms of URLs, and e-mail addresses). Those mentioned include NGONet (credited with being the first to raise links between gender, IT and the Third World in the early nineties); APC (a network of Internet providers working for social justice); IGNOU, or the Indira Gandhi National Open University in India, which runs a large number of programmes for women throughout India. Similarly, networks outside India, like the Network Women in Development Europe (WIDE) is based in Brussels and DAWN is the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, working out of the Carribean, Latin America and South Asia too.

Efforts to bridge the gap

are also evident in these pointers—though without detailed links or URLs—including the UNESCO-founded network of women and men journalists committed to gender equality in the media, called WOMMED

/FEMMED. It encourages greater freedom of expression for women and a more balanced access to decision-making in the media. Sharma also points to the UNESCO and SID (Society for International Development)-produced booklet, ‘An International Annotated Guide of Women Working on the Net’. An evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of these initiatives, and how far they’ve reached towards their goals would surely have helped. Plans and projects are only one side of the coin; but are organisations really achieving what they set out to do?

The author emphasises on the significance of networking in women’s empowerment. She points out that networking can be employed for many purposes—social networking, networking to further one’s business, and networking for political advocacy. She says: “Worldwide, women are putting IT to forward the movement (of women’s rights and empowerment); communicating among dispersed networks, mobilising action in times of crisis, participating in policy debates and voicing new perspectives. Information and communications have always played a vital role in the women’s movement.”

According to Sharma, we need to have a clearer understanding about what the various tech tools available today—like e-mail, conferencing, the Web, CD-ROM and diskettes, information gateways and portals, fax servers, discussion lists, and connections with traditional media—mean for women. She also touches upon specific ways in which their political empowerment can be enhanced: giving them a voice as a tool for networking; strengthening women’s participation in the political process by improving the performance of elected women; improving women’s access to government and its services; for education; and for the dissemination of information (including indigenous knowledge).

The author also elaborates on how IT and globalisation are changing women’s work roles. Sharma points to home-based work and teleworking, where lower ends of teleworking like data-entry would be a “more realistic possibility for a large number of women in developing countries”. Other options are available for women in data-warehousing and call centres.

Yet, what seems lacking are critical questions about whether a dependency on such jobs make sense and the implications of doing the back-office drudgery for the West at lower rates.

She looks at the role of ICTs in propping up distance education, which has also been instrumental in introducing several opportunities for women. Says Sharma: “Women’s sites cover subjects such as gender and sexuality, feminism, women’s health, women in computer science, engineering, women’s studies, women in academia and women in industry.” Once again, specific lists and URLs here would have only added value.

Points out Sharma: “Women have less online access than men, for all the usual gender-related reasons—time, money, control, learning opportunities, other commitments, prioritising others’ needs...”

Sharma has culled her information from a variety of sources. Once in a while, one comes across an interesting byte that puts the issue into better perspective. Concerns from a distant continent make sense here too. For instance: “In South Africa, a concern is that IT publications and the IT milieu are concerned only with the top end of the market, faster machines, and more impressive graphics.”

All in all, Sharma’s book seems well argued on the generalities; where it seems to be lacking is in the specifics, case-studies and real-life examples that emerge from South Asia, the region where it is written and published.