Gender and ICTs

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have created new economic and social opportunities all over the world. Their use, however, continues to be governed by existing power relations whereby women frequently experience relative disadvantage. Amid this inequality are individuals and organisations that are working to use ICTs to further gender equality. These are the issues addressed by the BRIDGE Cutting Edge Pack on Gender and ICTs. The first section of this article consists of extracts from the Overview Report in the Pack. It describes ways in which women have been able to use ICTs to support new forms of information exchange, organisation, and empowerment. The second section, taken from the textbox ‘Telecentres: Some Myths’, describes three assertions which frequently lead to problems in all forms of investment in development-related information exchanges with poor or less powerful groups, not only those relating to telecentres and women.

This paper explores the meanings of women’s empowerment and gender equality
in the information society, looking at the opportunity for progressive change and
critically unpacking the Information and Communication Technology for Development
(ICTD) discourse on gender and development. It also seeks to articulate
a rights-based framework to policy and action that takes on the specific
question of what models of access and connectivity will work for the marginalised
peoples and countries, in a manner that promotes gender justice. The paper was
written for the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development
(UN-GAID) Annual Meeting and Global Forum 2008.

The emergent information or network society 1 context offers a range of opportunities for women and girls to enhance their participation across economic, socio-cultural and public-political realms of life, as well as the scope for enhancing their individual freedoms. The Post-2015 agenda therefore, both in terms of goals and related targets and indicators, has to promote and measure women's participation in the information society and their access to and effective use of the Internet and ICTs. This paper recommends that the question of gender and ICTs must be addressed in the post-2015 global development agenda, in the following manner: 1.There should be a specific goal related to the meaningful and effective use of ICTs and the Internet, that is measured through gender sensitive targets and indicators. This should take into account the quality of access, and not just availability. 2.There should be a specific goal related to gender equality and women's and girls' empowerment that takes into account access to and effective use of ICTs and the Internet as a target (with appropriate indicators) within the goal. The larger goal of women's empowerment in the contemporary information society cannot be dis-embedded from the context that ICTs are creating. 3. To facilitate a nuanced assessment, the indicators that are evolved under the above-mentioned goals must capture the individual-household, public-institutional and community-social aspects of access to, and use of, ICTs and the Internet. The paper also highlights the areas that global and national policy and programmatic frameworks need to address, in order to promote the gender equality agenda in the information society context: (a)Promotion of access and effective use of the Internet and ICTs (b)Creation of opportunity structures for women and (c)Building equitable techno-architectures. Enclosures: Annex 1 'Gender Equality and ICTs: Existing Global Frameworks' 1 'Information society' is a term that has been coined to refer to the current context where the use, distribution, consumption and manipulation of information is increasingly at the heart of our social, economic and cultural life. The rise of the knowledge economy as opposed to a Fordist, industrial economy and the increasing reduction of space and time barriers to information and communication flows with the growth of digital technologies, the rise and increasing significance of networks in all spheres of life, are some of its most visible characteristics. The term 'network society' was coined by Manuel Castells to describe this context, as an attempt to draw attention to the centrality and significance of networks.

IT for Change and the Centre for Advocacy and Research 2 worked with Vimochana 3 at the Daughters of Fire -India Court of Women on Dowry and Related Forms of Violence to explore how the questions of gender and violence intertwine in the 'new media' context. Indeed, the past decade has seen a metamorphosing media reality. We are witness to the changing face of 'old' media -print, radio, television -and an emergence of the new digital media space that has ushered in certain seamlessness across media forms. Indeed, this shift has rendered inadequate our categories for interpreting media through a feminist lens and the basic questions around identity, difference, representation and participation.

An uncritical, bandwagon approach to policy and practice has, unfortunately, upstaged deeper explorations that connect the social theories of ICTs with the experience and values of development. This essay critiques the afªnity the ICTD discourse holds for technodeterminism and neoliberalism. It is largely based on what was originally a reºective input into the Harvard Forum II on ICTs, a stock-taking exercise about ICTD that also examined possible directions for the future. It draws mainly from the Indian context, which is not only home to many an experiment in ICTD, but is also a relevant case study for discussions around poverty and human development, topics that were in focus at the Harvard Forum II.

A report on a consultation on women and the use of information technologies that addressed how policy choices need to avoid narratives of fear around new technologies, narratives that can effectively constrain women's freedom to use digital spaces.

The internet is a building block of the information society
and as such its governance is an important issue. What are
the issues related to internet governance and how can they be dealt with? How may the Internet Governance Forum contribute to participatory decision-making? These are important issues ahead of the next IGF meeting, to be held in India in end-2008.

The outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society
held in Tunis in November 2005 were widely seen as “fuzzy”.
But the WSIS was never mandated with a clearly defined global “problem”. The summit was held at a time when US-led interests were active in undermining several democratic forums of global governance, even as global capital appeared increasingly intolerant towards public policy regimes. Thus there was a consistent attempt to keep several substantive issues out of the summit discussions. Moreover, the private sector, as a supposed leader of the information society, was pushed in very questionable ways into various governance arrangements.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have created new economic and social opportunities all over the world. Their use, however, continues to be governed by existing power relations whereby women frequently experience relative disadvantage. Amid this inequality are individuals and organisations that are working to use ICTs to further gender equality. These are the issues addressed by the BRIDGE Cutting Edge Pack on Gender and ICTs. The first section of this article consists of extracts from the Overview Report in the Pack. It describes ways in which women have been able to use ICTs to support new forms of information exchange, organisation, and empowerment. The second section, taken from the textbox ‘Telecentres: Some Myths’, describes three assertions which frequently lead to problems in all forms of investment in development-related information exchanges with poor or less powerful groups, not only those relating to telecentres and women.

The Report analyses the Government of Karnataka's financial investment in human development and the outcomes of the state's fiscal policy decisions for key human development indicators such as life expectancy at birth, female literacy and access to education, infant and maternal mortality rates, and incomes and employment. The Report measures the state's performance in human development in those human priority areas that most affect the living conditions of the poor and the vulnerable. KHDR 2005 views the theme of spending on human development from two perspectives. Factoring equity and social justice issues poses the question: How can social sector spending be targeted to ensure a compression of gender, caste, income and regional disparities? Second, factoring good governance, people's participation and the role of NGOs provides a deeper understanding of the stakeholders whose actions can transform human development into a process that is participatory, democratic and accessible. The HDR 2005, Karnataka's second Report, has several unique features: The country's first thematic HDR, with a focus on financing human development. The first ever computation of the HDI and the GDI for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. Extensive use of survey-based data for the chapters on the status of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes in Karnataka. A stand-alone study of Stree Shakti and Swashakti women's self-help groups to assess the impact of these programmes on women's empowerment. An analysis of governance strategies to ensure better service delivery. The first HDR to look at the role of NGOs in supplementing state-driven initiatives. A presentation of alternative models of participatory development. The Report then goes on to make a series of recommendations to promote an improvement in the HDI and the GDI of the state. Resource mobilisation and effective use of existing resources are analysed extensively.