London School of Economics
Innovator, KnowNet
Initiative
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
are for everyone and women have to be an equal beneficiary to the advantages
offered by the technology, and the products and processes which emerge from
their use. The benefits accrued from the synergy of knowledge and ICT need not
be restricted to the upper strata of the society but have to freely flow to all
segments of the women population. The gamut of areas in which ICT can put a
greater control in the hands of women is wide and continuously expanding, from
managing water distribution at the village-level to standing for local
elections and having access to lifelong learning opportunities. ICT in
convergence with other forms of communication have the potential to reach those
women who hitherto have been not been reached by any other media, thereby
empowering them to participate in economic and social progress, and make
informed decision on issues that affect them. The paper explores the avenues
created by ICT enabled networking processes for women in the areas of empowerment
and governance, the hindrances faced in engendering of these processes and goes
on to suggest ways to ensure that greater benefits accrue to women in a
distributed manner.
The world is in the midst of a knowledge revolution,
complemented by opening up of entirely new vistas in communication
technologies. Recent developments in the fields of information and
communication technology are indeed revolutionary in nature. Hundreds of
million of dollars are being spent on Information and Communication technologies,
reflecting a powerful global belief in the transformatory nature of these
technologies. By definition, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
are a diverse set of technological tools and resources to create, disseminate,
store, bring value-addition and manage information. Interestingly, ICT when
used as a broad tool for amalgamating local knowledge incubated by the
communities with information existing in remote databases and in public domain
heralds the formation of a new class of society ö the Knowledge Society.
Knowledge thereby becomes the fundamental resource for all economic and
developmental activities in the knowledge society of which women form an equal
part. The process of synthesis of knowledge possessed across communities, by
men and women, with the global pool of knowledge with the scope for further
enrichment lays the genesis for knowledge networking.
Knowledge networking opens up a new way of interactive
communication between government bodies, NGOs, academic and research
institutions, and the civil society. It helps communities, both men and
women, to take appropriate steps to recognise and document the knowledge they
possess and in reflecting this knowledge in a wider social domain for directed
change through the use of information and communication technologies.
The one resource that liberates
people from poverty and empowers them is knowledge. Possessing knowledge is
empowering while the lack of knowledge is debilitating. The World Bank organised
forum called Voices
of Poor which got feedback from 60,000 people in 60 countries concluded
that people wanted access to knowledge and opportunities instead of charity to
fight conditions leading to poverty. And knowledge is not a scarce resource -
it is infinitely expansible and proliferates with its use. “……the capacity
to acquire and generate knowledge in all its forms, including the recovery and
upgrading of traditional knowledge, is perhaps the most important factor in the
improvement of human condition.” (Bezanson and Sagasti 1995:5-6) Knowledge
and its widespread dissemination in an absorbable and usable form is therefore
quintessence to initiate the change process for women’s development.
Historically, the isolation of
women from the mainstream economy and their lack of access to information
because of societal, cultural and market constraints have led them to become
distant from the global pool of information and knowledge. This distance is
reflected in the levels of empowerment and equality of women in comparison to
men, and has enormously contributed to the slow pace of development in South.
It is now a well understood fact that without progress towards the empowerment
of women, any attempt to raise the quality of lives of people in developing
countries would be incomplete. There is an increasing amount of evidence which substantiates that
societies that discriminate by gender pay a high price in terms of their ability
to develop and to reduce poverty. Ironically, the importance of bringing a
gender perspective to policy analysis and designing of development tools and
interventions is still not widely understood, and the lessons for development
still need to be fully integrated by the donors and national policy makers.
In the context of knowledge
sphere, the issues of gender equality, equity and empowerment of women become
even significant as women have a strategic role in incubation and transfer of
critical knowledge which often forms the blue print of survival for communities to adapt and minimise
their risks in the adverse of circumstances. Women because of their biological
and social roles, are generally more rooted than men in the confines of their
locality They are therefore more aware than men of the social, economic and
environmental needs of their own communities (Mitter, 2000). Women have been
the traditional incubators and transfer media of knowledge relating to seed
preservation and storage, food processing, indigenous health practices etc.
Such forms of knowledge are often contextual, rooted in experience and
experiments but are non-codified. Therefore it is essential that any knowledge
sharing mechanism recognises the value of knowledge possessed by women and
provides space for value-addition and the amalgamation of womenâs knowledge in
the global knowledge pool. This condition forms the basis of evolution of women
as equal contributors and end-users of knowledge in a knowledge society.
The most critical development
issues relating to ICT and evolution of knowledge societies must be approached
from both global and local perspectives through the joint participation of the
public, private, and non-governmental sectors and members of the civil society.
Gender mainstreaming becomes a cross-cutting theme in all these issues. There
is an underlying need to shape the knowledge networks to deliver benefits to
all segments of the population so that they are responsive to the poorest and
the most disadvantaged communities which include the women folk.
It is significant to reinstate that engendering of knowledge networks rests on an operational framework that values the contextual knowledge possessed by women and recognises their capacity to take judicious action based on a given knowledge set. Surveys of women innovators in Kenya and the Philippines show that women's inventions tend to have direct application to improving family and community well-being or increasing efficiency. Examples include a power tiller built to women's physical specifications and their agricultural practices, an improved cloth diaper, improved diagnostic kit for leishmaniasis, and a fireless cooker. (IDRC, 1997) Support of women's existing technology activities, recognition of their role as possessors of most of the indigenous knowledge in developing countries, and support of their potential for contributions to community development therefore becomes one of the critical requirement for engendering knowledge networks.
Engendering of knowledge networks
opens up avenues for women to freely articulate and share their experiences,
concerns and knowledge with the possibilities of their further enrichment as
the same pass through a gamut of network users. They are instrumental in helping women break
from the stereotypical structures and narrow outlooks of the society and from
the hegemony of male dominated societal structures. Other
benefits include objective and targeted information flows, low communication
costs, sharing of best practices and solutions, and opening up of alternate
communication channels
with women, hitherto un-reached or under-serviced, and accomplish a deeper
geographic penetration.
Knowledge networking models however need not be confined
within the closed boundaries of information flows but have the potential to
evolve as alternate institutional models for developmental promotion. By
focussing on the improved use of information and communication technologies,
women can broaden the scope of their actions and address issues which were
previously beyond their capacity. For example, knowledge networking for influencing
decision-making strengthens the democratic processes and brings recognition to
the power of women community as it enables the decision-making mechanism to
perpetuate right below to involve women at the grassroots level without being
confined to the bureaucratic straitjacketed approach of the more formal
institutions. Alternative mechanisms to carry out these tasks would take a lot
more time, resources and efforts. Engendering knowledge networks therefore
bridges the knowledge gap existing between men and women, builds up awareness
among the women communities and their representative leaders, and encourages
their informed and active participation in areas which influence them.
Not the least, women's need for
information are also structured according to their gendered roles and
responsibilities, which in turn influences their participation and response to
knowledge networking. The strategic need for mainstreaming women’s contextual
knowledge in the information highway therefore could not be more need felt.
Women stand to benefit tremendously from the inroads laid by ICT in the domain of knowledge networking. The pertinent question is not whether they stand to benefit but how do they benefit and what are the mechanisms to ensure that the benefits accrued to the women community do not remain restricted to mere trickle-down effects? At the very conceptual level, ICT have the potential to digitally link each and every women in the world in a star topology network which opens up endless possibilities for information exchange. This mechanism could be used by women in creative ways, both to communicate with other people who are online, and also to disseminate information to people in the outside world who are not online through the use of convergence and hybrid technologies such as community emails, community radio broadcast, tele-centres, newsletters, videos etc. This mechanism forms the skeletal process through which women communities could overcome the constraints of seclusion, mobilise resources and support, reach out new markets, and open up avenues for life-long learning. We could broadly classify the spaces in which women stand to gain under the spheres of Empowerment and Governance.
EMPOWERMENT SPHERE
Empowerment of women in the context of knowledge societies is understood as building the ability and skills of women to gain insight of actions and issues in the external environment which influence them, and to build their capacity to get involved and voice their concerns in these external processes, and make informed decisions. It entails building up of capacities of women to overcome social and institutional barriers, and strengthening their participation in the economic and political processes for an overall improvement in their quality of lives.
Knowledge networking offers the unprecedented potential to empower every women as each women is a potential recipient and incubator of knowledge in a truly networked world. A range of ICT- models have been used to support the empowerment of women all around the world. In Africa, groups such as the Africa Women’s Network of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) have conducted training workshop to support electronic networking among women’s group. In Uganda, the Forum for Women in Democracy uses the internet and email to research issues for the country’s female MPs, and Women’s Net is a similar initiative in South Africa. (World Bank, 2000) Knowledge networking catalyses the process of women’s empowerment as it is based on the mechanism of knowledge sharing and provides avenues for women to come together, build up consensus on issues that affect them and act strategically to maximise benefits through different approaches elucidated in the subsequent paragraphs.
Access to information can be seen
as a central issue concerning empowerment of women. There is no worse forms of
human rights violations than to be deprived of the ability to think, create and
communicate in freedom. Women in developing countries, however have been
traditionally excluded from the external information sphere both deliberately
and because of factors which inherently work to their disadvantage such as
little freedom of movement, low education-levels etc. Under such circumstances,
it is not uncommon for women to be little aware of information relating to
market economy and local governance processes, which impedes their process of
empowerment.
ICT however opens up a direct
window for women to the outside world. Information now flows to them without
distortion or any form of censoring, and they have access to same information
as their male counterpart. This leads to broadening of perspectives, building
up of greater understanding of their current situation and causes of poverty,
and initiation of interactive processes for information exchange. Further, such
forms of networking open up alternate forms of communication to those offered
by the conventional or the government controlled media sources, and therefore
catalyses the empowerment process. For example, when a devastating cyclone hit
the south-eastern shores of India in 1999 killing hundreds of people, the women
folks were able to comprehend through internet that the scale of disaster was
much higher because of the negligence and ill-preparedness of the State
governmentâs disaster mitigation agency as a cyclone of similar intensity in US
had led to the loss of only nine lives. The opening up alternate forms of
communication with the external world made the women more informed and they were
empowered enough to realise that their real causes of poverty were not natural
disasters but ineffective state governance mechanisms. A link was therefore
established by the women between bad governance and poverty- their first step
to empowerment as they were able to identify the causal loop to their poverty
and the players involved.
ICT-
Women
Empowerment
Model
The role of knowledge networking is not limited to extracting
information from the global pool but is becoming increasingly significant in
broadcasting information pertinent to individual women or women communities to
the outside world. In Bangladesh, the
internet became a principal tool for advocacy and garnering support, when women
students fromÊ a university began a campaign against campus rape. Pressure that
was exerted internationally and nationwide added to the massive physical
protests by the students, forcing the establishment to conduct an enquiry.
(Alam, 2000) Small as these processes may seem, but they open up a range of
options for women to deviate from the conventional media for information
transfer to those which offer a greater control over the information that they
wish to broadcast and in the least possible time to the global civil network.
Women for the first time have realised that they may be isolated or barred from
participation in process within their immediate community but that does not
prevent them from communicating to the outside world.
Knowledge
Networks: Empowerment through employment of women
ICT makes the role of time and distance less significant in organising business and production related activities. As a result of the technology, a high proportion of jobs outsourced by big firms are going to women. Women therefore can work from anywhere and at anytime and raise that extra income to become more financially independent and empowered. Recently, companies like Ford and General Electrics have moved their back-end operations to Asia and employ a large number of women workers having basic information technology and data management skills. New areas of employment such as tele-marketing, medical transcription etc. have also opened up tremendous job opportunities for women. These jobs are definitely under-paid and fall at the lower segment of ICT jobs, nevertheless, they are opening up avenues where none existed before.
Significantly, the process of initiating knowledge
networking by itself creating jobs in developing countries. Knowledge
networking requires skilled and trained knowledge workers who can perform specific tasks of
understanding, compiling, analysing, searching, providing value-addition and
disseminating information etc. and a number of women get employed in such jobs.
Knowledge
Networks: creating class of women entrepreneurs
One of the most
powerful application of ICT in the domain of knowledge networking is electronic
commerce. Electronic commerce refers not just to selling of products and services
online but to the promotion of a new class of ICT-savvy women entrepreneurs in
both rural and urban areas. Women over time have learnt the advantages offered
by ICT and its potential in opening up windows to the outside world. This has
put them in a greater control over the activities performed by them- laying the
foundation for entrepreneurship development.
In Lethem, a village in Guyana which has aÊ community of only 2,000 people, an organization ö ãRupununi Weaverâs Societyä formed by indigenous women of two tribes revived the ancient art of hand-weaving large hammocks from locally grown cotton -- and then took their exquisite wares online. (http://www.gol.net.gy/rweavers/) They hired a young member to create a Web site. And last year, they sold 17 hammocks to people around the world for as much as $1,000 apiece- a gigantic sums in these parts. (Simon Romero, The New York Times Company, 2000) The path ahead has not been a cake walk for this womenâs group and the group has been struggling since then to get by as their success aroused new gender and social equations which opposed this process. Nevertheless, a space has been cast for women to emerge as entrepreneurs and use the ICT tool to their advantage.Ê
Significantly, a number of non-profit organisations have diversified their services to provide support to this class of entrepreneur women. PEOPLink (http://www.peoplink.org/) is one such non-profit organization which has been helping women communities traditionally involved with handicrafts to put their products online in the world market. It is building up a global network of Trading Partners (TPs) that, in turn, will provide services to several community-based artisan producer groups. It equips the TPs with digital cameras and trains them to capture images and edit them in a compressed format suitable for transmission via the Internet. The images of the crafts are placed on the PEOPLink web page and efforts are made to promote them to retail and wholesale buyers in the industrialized countries.
Knowledge Networks: value- added services to women
As mentioned earlier, knowledge networks open up alternate channels of communication which have the potential to deliver the right
information to the right person in the least possible time. This attribute of knowledge networks could be harnessed in a number of
innovative ways in areas such as sustainable agriculture, tele-medicines, distance-education etc. for the benefit of women
communities.
SEWA Bank in India uses the development communication wing of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to reach remote
villages. Discussions on topics like panchayati raj (village governance institutions), women in development, nursery raising and
forestry management, savings and credit are beamed to different villages through the use of satellite cable. The viewers can phone
in their enquiries which are answered promptly by a panel of experts. Further, village Villianur of Pondicherry in India, has become
the hub of an information revolution. People in the village, are connected through an online database which helps them access
required information in their vernacular language. This novel experiment organised by the M.S Swaminathan Research Foundation
(MSSRF) as part of its Bio-Information Village Experiment begun in December 1998 has transformed Villianur into the centre of a
local area network. The villagers congregate around the centre to get connected with the latest local news. Women get information
about the wholesale and market prices of vegetables. Women wanting some health-related information gets all the details about her
particular ailment and the name of the doctor who can attend to her. Distance education is yet another one of those significant
areas where women stand to gain tremendously. Internet and television broadcasts opens up avenues for women to continue with
their education at their own pace and from the confines of their homes even after having discontinued it due to family or social
responsibilities.
The above examples are just an indication of the models on how ICT can provide better and value-added services to women, and
there are several such innovative models which need to be tried out and replicated on a much larger scale through the involvement of
public and private agencies. Last, but not the least, the inception of ICT have opened a window for lifelong learning for women.
Learning and training continues throughout womenâs lives as new skills and competencies gain value, and this ensures that avenues
for women to expand their roles from household economy to a wider market economy remain forever open.Ê
Knowledge
Networking : changing Stereotypic Roles
The unrestricted flow of information through ICT processes opens up avenues for men and women to view each other from a different
perspective. The sharing of views between communities living in different geographical and cultural sphere will lead to broadening of
views and changing of mindsets over time. It is a fact that horizontal level of communication has a greater impact than the vertical
communication structures and knowledge networking promotes horizontal flow of information. Men may learn more about the
productive roles of women in the wider economy in different cultures and regions, and may become more willing to provide equal
spaces to women. The removal of this stereotypic mindset would certainly be a big step towards the empowerment of women.
GOVERNANCE SPHERE
A key element to better governance is to "democratise" people's knowledge and understanding of complex social, economic and welfare mechanisms and processes, and to "demystify" the political choices available to their elected representatives. Knowledge networking is impacting the governance processes by reshaping the current socio-political equations and revolutionising the way government does its business. Till now, Southern governments have been making sporadic efforts in fostering the involvement of women in governance process through reservations, creation of separate departments to handle women issues etc. Nevertheless, it is seen, that even in their official roles, women function in a pseudo manner and they do not have the real power or the capacity to make decisions. A women headperson in a village may not be able to effectively render her duty as she may not be able to attend village meetings which are held at far-off places or during night times or require direct communications with men. In such cases, ICT tools can come in handy and open up alternate and easier channels for women toÊ communicate without moving outside their homes or village.
The marginalization of women in political processes and governance in general has been both the cause and effect of slow progress made in the advancement of women. Knowledge networking is changing the very nature and magnitude of women-governance interface. By their virtual potential to connect every women in a network of information exchange, it offers endless possibilities for women to play a pro-active role and impact on governance processes at the local and global level. The new networking technologies are eliminating the boundaries between the various branches of the governing institutions, and between the different levels of governing institutions. The ICT - governance models are marked by a shift towards community based approaches. And this model will see widespread growth and adoption in the coming years as people come to realise the control ICT-models puts in their hand to influence the governance mechanisms. Women would definitely be one of the major stakeholders to benefit from this transformation as they have been traditionally denied participation in decision-making platforms.
The new models of governance
opens up avenues for direct participation of women which so far has been
limited to representative forms of participation in which women were
insufficiently represented. These models would lead to a more interactive and pro-active
form of communicating with officials in the local governance spheres ö a
process which will lead to greater transparency and accountability of their
actions. The notion of distance and time would become meaningless as the
technologies have the capability of working at all times and from all
geographical locations. It also means that women in rural areas for whom time
is a scarce commodity and for whom it is absolutely impossible to commute to
public offices- the new technologies would enable them to leap-frog to an
altogether different platform where they can voice their opinions and
communicate to the concerned person without additional burden on their time or
commuting large distances.
The women
themselves have been exploring ways and taking independent initiatives to
promote diverse, gender-entrenched approaches to play a more influential role
in the governance processes as we will see in subsequent paragraphs.
Knowledge
Networking for access to Government Information
One
of the main functions of the government is to provide information with regards
to policies, rules and regulations, administrative and service delivery matters
etc. This information forms the basis of informed participation of the civil
society in matters relating to governance.
Women because of their isolation from
mainstream activities do not have easy access to government issued information
and therefore are unable to take part in governance issues. Knowledge
networking however changes this situation and enables information to perpetuate
right below till the last digital node of the society so that women can access
government websites to know more about issues such asÊ name of the local
officials and their roles and responsibilities, working hours of government
offices, application forms available for download, latest rules and regulations
etc. Provision of this basic information to the women communities would imply
their greater awareness and interest about governance issues leading to their
greater participation in future.
Knowledge
Networking for Service Delivery
This area would emerge as the single most
strategic area for the participation of women communities in government
mechanisms.Ê Knowledge Networking paves the way for interacting with the
government on-line for various issues such Grievance Redressal, demanding a
service, seeking status of a service etc.Ê Enabling application forms to be
filled up on-line could be one of the simplest ways to initiate online-service
delivery and their utility could be advanced by setting up services to keep
track of the status of application and the reasons forÊ delays in grievance
redressal if any.
The
online service delivery approach could also be applied outside the government
institutions for the benefit of women. For example, the computerisation of SEWA Bank
in India ö the largest womenâs bank- has helped to expand the self-help groups
involved in financial services at the village level. Use of computers in
district level organisations has helped expand business by maintaining
up-to-date records and increasing productivity. It has opened up new
markets for craftswomen at Banaskantha and Kutch. The wares of these skilled
artisans are displayed on the Net, generating a lot of interest and bringing in
more business. This has helped the women command a better price for their
products and has benefited more than 40,000 women in these areas.
Knowledge
Networking for Monitoring Governance
Citizens and consumers of
government services now demand that the government be more open in their
dealings. On the face of it, the core principles of a democratic set up are
violated when people, especially women,Ê are excluded from the decision-making
processes. People have the power in democracy and in this age where information
is power, access to information by the people becomes the root to a thriving
democracy. If the strategic information relating to governance such as fund
dissipation, policy on key issues, taxes generated, budgetary spending,
overhead costs etc. are stored digitally and made available in public domain then
women can analyse and conclude from the available information on their own and
can make informed choices about their selection of candidates and parties for
the electoral processes.
Through innovative
ICT-models which harness the potential of knowledge networks to reach each
individual women, women could be included in all aspects of governance through on-line polls, and their views solicited on issues
affecting them through emails, bulletin boards, discussion groups etc. The opinion polls conducted
over the multi-media have the potential to make known the decisions favoured by
a large section of the women to the policy-planners and decision makers. The Andhra Pradesh cyber
model (see box item above) in India has proved that good policies and clear
vision need to be shared with people and their support cultivated for effective
governance and Information and Communication Technologies have an important
role to play in this process of reaching out.
Knowledge
networking helps build alliances and develop issue based solidarity among the
womenâs group which is a pre-requisite for concerted action. A womenâs group
raising a voice against
environmental degradation caused by unethical practices of the government or a
trans-national company no longer finds itself waging a lone battle but strikes
an ally in groups located across the continents raising their voices against
similar unethical practices.
Virtual
communities is yet another powerful, upcoming force in the knowledge societies.
Knowledge networking could help women groups to come together digitally and
form virtual communities which support a common view point and
value framework. The
virtual communities movement is directed at giving individuals, local
communities and regional groupings the chance to advocate policies which protect
their welfare interests and promote better governance at all levels. The thrust
is on creating spaces for decision-making within the existing governance
mechanism that would be democratically governed by welfare and human rights
principles, sustainability and social development objectives. Formation
of such virtual communities could be very effective in influencing polices and
debates which are trans-national in nature and need strong and persistent
lobbying atÊ the international level. In a way, knowledge networking strikes
alleys between women groups based on common value framework and objectives
rather than common geographical boundaries.
With the inception
of ICT and convergence technologies, it may be possible to bring up a
significant fraction of women communities in a more symbiotic digital network
which focuses on localized information and customized solutions, and works on
the theme of Global Technologies for Local Use. Women, however, are still very
much in a minority among the beneficiaries of knowledge networking. Women still
face huge imbalances in the ownership, control and regulation of the these new
information technologies, similar to those faced in other areas. (UNIFEM, 2000)
They face a lot of obstacles to harness the full potential offered by these
technologies which prevents them from attaining the full benefits of
development. This is because of a number of factors which act to the detriment
of womenâs participation - some of which are generic to all social development
models such as low levels of literacy, little access and control over economic
resources, low decision-making power, cultural attitudes and gender blind
approaches to development, while the others are specific to the ICT enabled
knowledge networking processes which are discussed below.
Awareness
Governments
and civil society organisations have still not fully absorbed the full
potential of ICT in gender development and therefore are far from the stage of
creating enabling frameworks and spaces for the growth of engendered
ICT-models. This is often because the use of ICT in knowledge networking is a
fairly new process and requires a modicum of sensitisation and belief on the
technology which is a factor of time as well as the willingness to adopt.Ê
Access
Issues
The new
technology comes at a financial cost which hinders its penetration to the
individual and sometimes even at the community level. The problem is even compounded
with the fact that women in developing countries have little control over the
household income and do not have the decision-power to invest in these
technologies. Further, there are associated physical and infrastructural
requirements such as electricity, telephone lines, spare parts, internet
gateways etc. which are unevenly distributed in developing countries and add to
the cost of initiating knowledge networking. The availability of ICT in these
countries is therefore skewed towards the urban areas and women in rural areas
constitute one of the main marginalized groups.
Capacity
and Skills
Initiating
knowledge networking processes and benefiting from them requires a threshold
level of capacity and trained human resource power to handle technology and
networking issues. Women because of their low levels of literacy and lack of
access to technical education are therefore at an even more disadvantaged
position than men in developing countries to fully benefit from knowledge
networking.
Linguistic
Barriers
Ironically,
much of the knowledge present in the global pool is in English language which
is not the understood by the poorest communities. There is very little content
in the global pool in the vernacular language of non-English speaking communities.
This makes the amalgamation of local knowledge of women with the global
knowledge a difficult task. The low levels of literacy among women further
distance them from these processes.
Ê
Knowledge
is power and knowledge networking leads to distribution of knowledge which in
effects leads to redistribution of power in the society. There is
redistribution of power between men and women, between communities and the
government at all levels etc. Thus, there are clear losers and winners in this
changing power equations. Relinquishing power is a difficult process especially
when the power has been closely held by a few for a long time and therefore
there is a steady resistance to this knowledge networking process.
Innovations
ICT models
thrive on innovations, customization and peopleâs participation. The stress in
the design of ICT models has so far remained restricted to mere digitisation of
available information and automation of processes earlier done manually. This
is certainly a welcome step but there is also a need to explore the specific
tasks which can only be performed through such ICT models and which would
directly benefit women. If an agency takes up innovative approach to the use of
ICT in the area of local governance, e-commerce, e-advocacy, e-income
generation activities etc. then there is no limit to the benefits that would be
accrued to the women community. Innovation rather than re-invention is the
approach that needs to be the followed for setting up engendered ICT models.
It
is a hard truth, that the majority of the poor are women and they experience
vulnerability and powerlessness to a much higher degree than men. Equitable
access to ICT technology and the autonomy to receive and produce the
information relevant to their concerns and perspectives are therefore critical
issues for women. ICT strategies and models can succeed in bridging the poverty
gap only if there is a concerted effort towards formulation of enabling policy
frameworks and avenues which create opportunities and incentives for women to
participate and benefit from the networking processes. Recent important
international policy documents have recognised the gender implications of the
new technologies. The ãPlatform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on
Women-ä states that, ãwomen should be empowered by enhancing their skills,
knowledge and access to information technology. This will strengthen their
ability to combat negative portrayals of women internationally and to challenge
instances of abuse of power of an increasingly important industry... .ã
Women therefore need to be involved in decision making regarding the
development of the new technologies in order to participate fully in their
growth and impact.
The
personal ownership of ICT for the vast majority ofÊ women in developing
countries is not feasible for the foreseeable future, which implies that the
question of where and how they can gain access to ICT becomes central to the
knowledge networking processes. The intermediary organizations can facilitate
in bridging the "last mile" of connectivity by providing community
based technological interface for the networking process. This is an area where
there is a maximum potential for intermediary organizations- to act as
knowledge nodes at the village or community levels. Intermediary organisations
can ensure that email accounts, bulletin boards, search engines, mailing lists,
listservs and other useful functions serve as communication, networking and
collaboration channels among the womenâs group, and between women and the
external sphere.
Intermediary
organisations could also contribute to building capacities of women by
providing them training in basic computer literacy skills, internet access,
surfing skills and access to information via internet, desktop publishing,
website creation and e-commerce. In order to facilitate access for women from
other classes and sectors, these intermediary organisations need to be
strategically located in local institutions to which women have open and equal
access, such as health centres, women's NGOs, women's employment centres,
libraries, women's studies departments and institutes, community centres etc.
Women will not be able to benefit from knowledge networking processes unless specific ICT-models are created which are targeted to the needs of the local women community. This learning could then be disseminated by creations of start-up CD-ROMS or websites which contain information and the necessary software tools for setting up of simple ICT-models that women can initiate at the community level. For example, prototype models of a website which displays email and postal addresses of all the local district level government officials could be created so that womenÊ could use email or email-to-fax technologies to influence local area governance.Ê Models may also be created on the lines of setting up of virtual shops for marketing of local handicraft and skills or on how to search for information pertinent to the local women community such as on health issues, horticultural information etc. Further, emphasis needs to be given to the creation of gender sensitive local content portals which would encourage local participation and lead toÊ generation of knowledge relevant to local communities.Ê
Building
Partnerships
In order to build effective and
sustained engendered knowledge societies- it is necessary to involve strategic
stakeholders from both the public and the private sectors. These could include
the government bodies, corporate firms, financial institutions and the NGOs.Ê
Fostering corporate partnership in ICT ventures and raising of venture capital
fund for social development projects becomes an important line of thought. This
could be done through a plethora of ways such as ICT based advertisement, using
existing corporate infrastructure for opening of telecentres, bringing about
transfer of technical expertise from corporate to the development sector etc.
World Computer Exchange (http://www.worldcomputerexchange.org), for example, brokers donations
of working, surplus, internet-accessible computers and monitors from large U.S.
companies and ships them to schools in developing countries to facilitate
the use of technology and experiential education in education reform. There is
a need to explore many more such useful models of participation of the private
sector in social development projects.
From a macro-level perspective, there has been very little research done to understand the information needs of women- in terms of the strategic information they wish to receive or produce. A knowledge sharing model which puts women in a greater control over the kind of information they need and produce becomes fundamental to the empowerment for women. For an all encompassing Knowledge Networking which empowers the women, the governmental and international agencies need to follow an innovative approach to ICT based knowledge networking supplemented by start-up and capacity-building support, and making full use of available technologies in the simplest ways. Incubator initiatives therefore need to be launched for the creation of dynamic, result-oriented ICT models which focus on social benefits rather than individual profits.
UNDP, for example, in partnership with the Cisco systems have started the NetAid Initiative (http://www.Netaid.org) which uses the Internet to fight extreme poverty. This has resulted in not just flow of funds but technical expertise and skilled human resource power from corporate entities to explore new ways of eradicating poverty. The NetAid recently launched its Mother and Baby Survival Program to provide cleaner and safer environments for childbirth to expectant mothers and newborns in Rwanda. This programme is based on generating funds through individual donors in the North using e-commerce tools. Prospective donors can log on to the website and donate online which will make it possible to provide ãmother and baby survival kitsä to mothers in Rwanda at an affordable cost. Needless to say, the innovative ICT- initiative has met with tremendous success.
End Note
Expectations
are high when it comes to ICT opportunities for women in developing countries,
including new forms of learning, education, health services, livelihood options
and governance mechanisms. However, on a cautious note, it needs to be realised
that information and
communication technologies by itself cannot be an answer and elixir to all
problems facing women development but it does bring new information resources
and can open new communication channels for the marginalised communities. It
offers new approaches for bridging the information gaps through interaction and
dialogue, building new alliances, inter-personal networks, and cross-sectoral
links between organizations. The benefits include increased efficiency in
allocation of resources for development work, less duplication of activities,
reduced communication costs and global access to information and human
resources.
Come what may, these technology have
started to carve their impact on the villagersâ lives as mothers do want their
children to learn computers so that they can lead a better quality of life.
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