Gender, ICT and the Information Society: A Global View

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Gender, ICT and the Information SocietyA
Global View

• Sophia Huyer, Executive Director
• Women in Global Science and Technology (WIGSAT)
• October 20, 2004

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Outline

• Context Women, technology and social development
• The digital divide
• The gender divide
• Poverty reduction and the information society
• Access vs knowledge
• What needs to be done?

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Women and technology Meeting the needs of
society

• Women are responsible for a set of core social
  development activities
• They engage in 60-90 of agricultural production
  activities in the developing world
• Energy for cooking gathering of firewood and
  water
• Indigenous knowledge
• Family health care
• Women make up 2/3 of nonformal sector producers
  and traders

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Conversely, we know that

• Reducing the gender gap in health and education
  reduces individual poverty and encourages
  economic growth.
• When technologies improve womens production and
  increase income, childrens well-being improves,
  school enrolment rises, birth rates decrease and
  environmental conservation increases.

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Women and technology for development

• However, we also know that in the history of
  technology implementation, womens interests,
  perspectives and situation have tended not to be
  taken into account
• After decades of technology in development,
  womens overall position has declined relative to
  men, and women have become disproportionately
  poor in relation to the men in their communities.
• Women cannot be assumed to naturally benefit
  from technology implementation

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Gendered assumptions around technology transfer

• Who receives the technology?
• Who receives the education, credit and other
  resources for the technology?
• Stamp
• technology seen as neutral
• Adoption of tech naturally leads to development
• Womens tech skills and use of techs overlooked
• Unequal access to dev resources credit,
  training, information

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The Digital Divide
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The Gender Divide

• The gender gap is narrowing in certain countries
• US and Canada, women are at 51
• Singapore, Chile, Hong Kong, Iceland and
  Thailand 47-49
• China, South Africa and the Scandinavian
  countries over 40

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The Gender Divide

• Women have less access to ICTs and the Internet
  than men in most countries of the world
• Access tends to be among upper class urban elites
  with higher levels of education.
• Wide variance among countries, but generally in
  Africa, users make up less than 10 of the
  population.

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Why is this a problem?

• MDGs and the UNDP Human Development Report
  recognise that ICT are an important tool for
  countries to increase economic growth and reduce
  poverty
• Target 18 of MDG 8 to make available the
  benefits of new technologies, especially
  information and communications.
• UNDP mainstreaming ICT will contribute to MDGs
  related to income poverty reduction, education,
  health, environment and gender equity

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Poverty reduction and the information society

• UNDP on poverty reduction six critical areas
• health, education, and other basic human
  development factors
• agriculture and food production
• ICT infrastructure and telecommunications policy
• IT employment and use of ICTs in womens SMEs
• e-governance and advocacy
• natural resources management.

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• WSIS Declaration
• We affirm that development of ICTs provides
  enormous opportunities for women, who should be
  an integral part of, and key actors, in the
  Information Society. We are committed to ensuring
  that the Information Society enables women's
  empowerment and their full participation on the
  basis on equality in all spheres of society and
  in all decision-making processes. To this end, we
  should mainstream a gender equality perspective
  and use ICTs as a tool to that end.

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What can ICTs do for women?

• ICTs support income generation, education,
  health, access to information and awareness on
  (public and private) rights, and improve their
  wellbeing
• ICT as a tool of economic and social empowerment
  for women
• DAW Expert Group Meeting, November 2002when
  there is an enabling environment, ICT can provide
  diverse avenues for womens social, political and
  economic empowerment.

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Gendered barriers in the information society

• A series of barriers prevent women from
  benefitting from or participating in the
  information society
• Socio-cultural attitudes
• Lower levels of literacy and education
• Less access to resources
• Triple role
• Value of ICTs to women
• Lack of appropriate infrastructure in areas where
  they live

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1.Perceptions of womens relationship with
technology

• Women considered incapable of master-ing
  technology or technology concepts
• Women are often uncomfortable in entering what is
  perceived as a male domain
• Sociocultural attitudes prohibit interaction with
  non-family members, or travel outside the
  home/community

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2. Literacy and education

• Women comprise 543 of the 854 million illiterate
  adults globally (63 percent)
• (This number is not expected to decrease
  substantially in the next 20 years. )
• Girls make up 2/3 of children in the developing
  world without access to basic education.
• They are less likely to finish school and less
  likely to move on to higher levels.

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• Numbers of women decrease as one moves up the
  educational ladder, especially in ST subjects
• Numbers of women in CSE and high-level IT
  training decrease
• Women have less say in the design of IT systems,
  cyberculture and cyberspace

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Resulting access issues include

• Less facility in languages dominant on the
  Internet
• Less facility with the written word

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3. Less access to resources

• Women make up the majority of the poor in many
  regions of the world, especially rural areas
• Less access to important resources
• Land, credit, training, technology inputs
• Less resources to pay for computer or
  communications equipment, access costs,
  maintenance, software, training, etc. etc.

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4. Womens triple role

• Productive, reproductive and community management
  responsibilities
• Include subsistence agriculture, SMEs, family
  health care, childcare
• Women work longer hours than men
• Women dont have TIME for training, long trips to
  a computer, inflexible access hours

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4. Where is the content?

• There is little information of particular
  interest to or value to women
• Women tend to use ICTs for communication
• They dont surf as much - targetted sites and
  activities
• Studies indicate that they will pay for ICT use
  if they see it having practical use
• Currently, there is little content BY women
• Womens knowledge is less recognised and
  documented

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5. Infrastructure

• Women live in rural areas
• Infrastructure and technology needs to be
  flexible and appropriate to conditions of
• Unreliable energy and telephone lines
• Varying means and approaches to communication and
  information dissemination
• Mix of traditional and new communications
  technologies

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From access to knowledge

• But access is insufficient what kind of
  information is being accessed? Who produced it?
  Who can use it? What is it used for?
• Women as passive recipients vs active
  knowledge/technology developers
• Knowledge is produced by processing information
  assimilated, reflected upon, adapted to
  experiences, needs, contexts and worldviews

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What are the building blocks of the information
society?

• Equality in ICT access, knowledge and use
  across all races, sexes and classes involves
• technology fluency
• mastery of analytical skills,
• computer, technology, information and
  communication concepts
• ability to imagine innovative uses for
  technologies across a range of problems and
  subjects and a
• ability to develop, find and use information and
  knowledge to improve ones life and expand ones
  choices.

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Gender, poverty reduction and the information
society

• Five main areas of approach
• Creating an enabling environment
• - telecom regulation ICT delivery
• Developing content which speaks to womens
  concerns and reflects their local knowledge,
• Education of girls and women with ICT and in ST
• Promoting increased employment in the IT sector
  and use of ICTs for womens SMEs
• Implementing e-governance strategies which are
  accessible to women and promoting womens
  lobbying and advocacy activities.
• We need sound data and research to inform policy
  in these areas.

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Models for action

• Content AfriAfya cell phone for agricultural
  enterprises, Senegal and Kenya
• Education - Makerere University WorldLinks
• Employment in the IT sector - Cisco Networking
  Academies Kampala Addis Ababa
  gender.ciscolearning.org
• SMEs - WIRES
• E-governance and democracy - Womens
  Voices/Development through Radio Isis-WICCE

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• Women in Global Science and Technology
• www.wigsat.org