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Gender and Information & Communications Technology
Creating Opportunities Through Technology
Through programs such as Grameen Phone in Bangladesh, téléboutiques in Senegal and Morocco, and phone shops in Ghana, women in developing countries are discovering new business opportunities through Information and Communications Technology (ICT).
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Photo: USAID/Jessica Morse
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The women who work at Iraq’s first independent radio station are redefining their community’s understanding of freedom as they broadcast music and talk shows championing the rights of women. Read more >.
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ICT enables creation of niche markets that require low capital investment where women can often establish or enter into businesses on their own. In the ICT field, women can provide a variety of services at multiple skill levels, from outsourced call or data entry centers to more training-intensive software engineering and geographic information system (GIS) jobs.
Access to Information
ICTs help to empower women by improving their ability to access information, education, and services, such as market prices for crops, professional development opportunities, and tools to promote their and their families’ health. ICTs also help empower women by improving the availability of information important to their lives.
Through technology (alongside and in partnership with other development efforts), women can have a voice beyond their local community, allowing them to network with other women around the world and better advocate for greater government responsiveness and transparency, greater economic opportunity, greater equality, and greater recognition and protection of their legal and human rights.
Addressing Biases
However, care must be taken that investments in ICT do not exacerbate existing inequalities. Technology is no different than any other intervention; gender must be taken into account when developing any program – otherwise, women and girls may be (unintentionally) excluded, especially if there are deeply held beliefs about technology being a traditionally male field.
The following are some areas where gender discrimination can inhibit women’s access to new technology:
- In many parts of the world, there are still deep-seated traditional biases against women and technology. Technology may be seen as "male", “high status”, "scientific/mathematical", or "expensive". Such attitudes can inhibit women from learning new skills or even accessing technology. Training materials, times, locations, and marketing often reflect this discrimination, assuming that women are not interested in learning about technology beyond basic computer usage.
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Cell phones have become an increasingly important tool for women, especially entrepreneurs such as this Nigerian “phone lady,” pictured above. In addition, women are more likely to rent telephone time if the person offering them access is another woman.
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- Internet public access points such as telecenters and cybercafés are sometimes not seen as appropriate places for women and girls. Women also often have less free time, especially without their children with them, and lower levels of disposable income to use on “extras” such as visiting a cybercafé.
- Many occupations traditionally held by women also do not offer them access to computers, creating both a lack of training opportunities and of exposure to technology. Most female small businesses are trade-based, where a computer would be a very costly investment. Having a computer in an office is still seen as a mark of status, restricted to senior staff, most of whom are still men.
- Women often access the Internet and computer technology through gatekeepers - often male family members who use the technology to communicate, send money, and research information at the direction of women. Even telephone access is sometimes restricted through a male family member or community member.
- Literacy has become less of an issue with the use of radio, television, film, and video programming. However, a high percentage of Internet content is still text-based – especially on cell phones and for low bandwidth environments – and much of that text is in the major world languages: English, Chinese, Spanish, and Japanese. Technology information is especially restricted to these top world languages. Women worldwide still have significantly higher rates of illiteracy, especially in major world languages.
Capitalizing on Opportunities
However, if women have access to technology within their traditional physical spheres, it can give them access to critical information for key topics. Women access information on reproductive and child/family health, government benefits, and schooling information. Telephony continues to be in high demand, especially for women conducting business or family affairs. Women use ICTs to organize remittances, manage small businesses, sell products, and seek new economic opportunities for themselves, their families, and their communities. And, most importantly, the overall global economy is more and more reliant on ICTs in everyday life; the exclusion of women from this transition further disempowers them.
Ways to Improve Access
By understanding the above gender implications of ICT for development, ICTs can greatly expand the opportunities women and girls have to participate in development objectives.
Some examples include:
- Cell phones have become an increasingly important tool for women, especially women entrepreneurs, who need access to credit and capital to invest in a cell phone. Projects such as Grameen Uganda and Bangladesh ("Village Phone") have demonstrated that women are more likely to rent telephone time if the person offering them access is another woman.
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The LearnLink project designed a pilot project to demonstrate how distance learning could be applied to improve the impact, efficiency, and quality of the Child Welfare Participant Training Program in Romania. |
- Newer ICTs can expand the use of traditional, low literacy, communications technology, such as radio and TV – still prime communications channels for broad audiences – by offering content reuse or on-demand content via podcasts, video on demand, or video compact discs (VCDs). As more and more cell phones offer MP3 and MP4 (audio and video) playback capability, users can replay programs at will, even in areas with no radio/TV coverage.
- When training programs directly target women, training rates increase. CISCO technology training offered through the Women in Technology training program was able to train over 2000 women by explicitly targeting and marketing to them.
- Addressing the social and financial barriers that potential female clients face works to give increased access. The Mali Community Learning and Information Center (CLIC) project distributed vouchers for free computer time to individual women and women’s organizations, which they used to obtain basic computer training, an essential step for the women to become regular telecenter users. The CLICs also offered “open days,” targeting women specifically by offering content of interest to women in the area.
- Addressing gender equity also works to allow women to enjoy the employment benefits that ICTs can bring. The Programa Para o Futuro ICT training and employment project for disadvantaged youth in Brazil directly addressed gender equity in training, interrelations between men and women, and underlying biases in the workplace.
Also, integrating ICTs into other development activities can extend the impact of those activities and allow additional benefits. For example:
- Small business training for women should include training on using small business management tools, such as accounting systems, spreadsheets, and email. The Macedonia e-BIZ project made gender equity a priority by asking all of its e-BIZ ICT centers to explicitly target ways to help female entrepreneurs grow their businesses.
- Using ICTs for distance learning and ongoing training can address the
issue of women being less available for travel or evening/weekend
meetings due to household responsibilities or safety concerns.
For example, the Info for Health project supports the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Implementing Best Practices Initiative website, which offers peer-to-peer best practice capturing and exchange and has an extremely active midwifery discussion forum made up of women primarily from developing countries.
- Low income women have successfully used ICTs to form peer networks through employment interest groups such as the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India.
Contact
Noreene Janus, ICT for Development Advisor, njanus@usaid.gov
Further Information
Publications and other resources on gender and ICT
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