Gender and ICTs: Overview Report By Anita Gurumurthy BRIDGE |
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY New technologies in the information and communications arena, especially the Internet, have been seen as ushering in a new age. There is a mainstream view that such technologies have only technical rather than social implications. The dramatic positive changes brought in by these information and communication technologies (ICTs), however, have not touched all of humanity. Existing power relations in society determine the enjoyment of benefits from ICTs; hence these technologies are not gender neutral. The important questions are: who benefits from ICTs? Who is dictating the course of ICTs? Is it possible to harness ICTs to serve larger goals of equality and justice? Central to these is the issue of gender and women’s equal right to access, use and shape ICTs. Access to new ICTs is still a faraway reality for the vast majority of people. The countries of the South, particularly rural populations, have to a significant extent been left out of the information revolution, given the absence of basic infrastructure, high costs of ICT deployment, unfamiliarity with ICTs, dominance of the English language in Internet content and indeed – lack of demonstrated benefit from ICTs to address ground-level development challenges. These barriers pose even greater problems for women, who are more likely to: be illiterate; not know English; and lack opportunities for training in computer skills. Domestic responsibilities, cultural restrictions on mobility, lesser economic power as well as lack of relevance of content to their lives, further marginalise them from the information sector. The ICT arena is characterised by the strategic control exercised by powerful corporations and nations – monopolies built upon the intellectual property regime, increasing surveillance of the Internet and an undermining of its democratic substance, and exploitation of the powerless by capitalist imperialism, sexism and racism. Within the ICT arena women have relatively little ownership of and influence on the decision-making processes, being underrepresented in the private sector and government bodies which control this arena. ICTs have brought employment gains, including for women. However, patterns of gender segregation are being reproduced in the information economy where men hold the majority of high-skilled, high value-added jobs, whereas women are concentrated in the low-skilled, lower value-added jobs. Work in call centres perpetuates the devaluation of women’s labour, and organisations in the information technology sector, as elsewhere, reward behaviour that is considered masculine. Some international organisations and civil society groups are engaging with issues that concern the democratisation of the ICT arena − from the digital divide and the right to communicate, to cultural diversity and intellectual property rights. Gender equality advocates have also been pushing for addressing the gender dimensions of the information society: integrating gender perspectives in national ICT policies and strategies, providing content relevant to women, promoting women’s economic participation in the information economy, and regulating violence against women and children connected to pornography on the Internet. The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held at Geneva in December 2003, brought together the multiple stakeholders in the arena to address the challenges and possibilities posed by ICTs, although with mixed outcomes. ICTs have also been used by many as tools for social transformation and gender equality. For example:
Such activities have been most effective where they go beyond issues of access and infrastructure to consider the larger social context and power relations. Effectiveness and reach have also been enhanced by combining “old” technologies such as radio, with “new” technologies such as the Internet. Far-reaching changes towards gender equality and women’s empowerment in the ICT arena are needed at every level – international, national and programme. Engendering ICTs is not merely about greater use of ICTs by women. It is about transforming the ICT system. This involves:
To make these happen, gender equality advocates need to storm the ICT arena in the untiring ways we have seen them engage in before. 2. Inequities in the Information Society This section seeks to examine the political underpinnings of the global information society. Looking at the larger picture – the political and economic context of ICTs – is important to understanding who benefits, who does not, and why. Gender dimensions of this context are extremely significant. 2.1 The Digital Divide The divisions between winners and losers in the global ICT arena are stark. This subsection offers some statistical analysis to illustrate inequities in access to ICTs. It also shows how the control of the ICT arena by powerful corporations, and the power relations between rich and poor countries, the state and citizen, men and women, determine access to benefits in the ICT arena. It highlights how, in the process of globalisation, the potential of ICTs is captured for furthering the interests of the powerful. In the information economy, wealthy countries and sections of society with the orientation, skills, income and time to access ICTs reap the benefits. Access to and strategic control of the ICT arena confer on powerful nations, corporations, groups and individuals alike, the privilege to influence the arena and gain from the innovation and change occurring at an extraordinary pace in the larger ICT environment. On the other hand, a disproportionate burden of challenges is borne by the majority. The digital divide, referring to the uneven distribution of benefits of ICTs within and between countries, regions, sectors, and socio-economic groups, signifies the uphill task facing developing countries and disadvantaged groups and sections in society (even in the developed countries) in their attempts to reap the benefits of the ostensibly level playing field that ICTs are supposed to provide. 2.1.1 Inequalities in Access ‘The so-called digital divide is actually several gaps in one. There is a technological divide – great gaps in infrastructure. There is a content divide. A lot of web-based information is simply not relevant to the real needs of people. And nearly 70 per cent of the world’s websites are in English, at times crowding out local voices and views. There is a gender divide, with women and girls enjoying less access to information technology than men and boys. This can be true of rich and poor countries alike.’ [1] UN secretary General, Kofi Annan Infrastructure gaps are reflected in telephone density figures, which show high levels of geographic disparity with 113.4 phones per 100 population in the US and 7.36 in Africa. Telephone connections have historically been the backbone of Internet connectivity, and are therefore at the heart of the infrastructure divide. The infrastructure divide manifests itself in differential access to computers and the Internet. Asia and Africa lag far behind the rest of the world in this respect. In Asia, there are only 4.45 personal computers per 100 inhabitants, in Africa 1.3. Even within regions, there are wide variations. For instance, in 26 out of 45 countries in Asia where data is available, Internet users constitute less than 5 per cent of the population. In South Korea and Singapore, more than 50 per cent of the populations use the Internet, whereas in countries like Myanmar and Tajikistan, only 0.5 per cent of the populations are Internet users. It is also important to remember that Internet users, even within any country, are geographically extremely concentrated, and rural populations are mostly excluded. Income disparities are another key determinant of differential access. 70 per cent of Internet users belong to the top 16 per cent income bracket; and the bottom 40 per cent by income constitute only 5 per cent of all Internet users. Apart from location and income, language is another determinant of the digital divide. The predominance of English on the Internet is a barrier for most users globally. Speakers of non-European and indigenous languages – including a large proportion of women – tend to be left out of the information loop. Even among the educated, proficiency in the dominant European language of a region may not be such that the user feels comfortable in using the Internet for training or involvement in List Serves (Huyer and Mitter 2003). The information society divide is especially acute for women. This is discussed in detail later in this chapter. 2.1.2 Inequalities in Ownership and Control The ownership of global ICT systems is alarmingly skewed. Globally, media ownership reflects multinational ownership patterns and mega-mergers. The monopoly of Microsoft illustrates the tremendous challenges for democratising software architecture and ownership. The few large corporate players – software and hardware corporations, telephone companies, satellite networks and Internet Service Providers − are driven purely by profit motives. The Internet has been seen as a potentially level playing field, a space in which all participants are equal. However, the fact is that the Internet is built upon the corporate control of information content and infrastructure, IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and domain name systems (necessary for a presence in the Internet), and technical standards which include communication protocols, mail and document formats, sound and video formats, without all of which there would be no Internet. Also, the democratic substance of the Internet is increasingly threatened, and individual liberties are under attack. Powerful corporate interests and some national governments are seeking to assert economic and political control respectively over the Internet to promote their interests. Many multi-national ICT giants are interested in garnering their monopoly to control “personal information” about their clients. The “war against terror”, it is widely acknowledged, has served as an excuse for the deployment of new technology as weapons of control to limit the right to privacy, and often to dissent. In countries like Vietnam and Tunisia, individuals have been arrested and some sentenced to prison terms for using the Internet for criticising the government or sharing information with overseas dissent groups. In mid-2001, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) adopted an Internet content rating system classifying gay and lesbian websites as “harmful media” and enforcing their blockage − all under the guise of protecting youth. [2] The growth of the Internet has coincided with the rise of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) regime, within the framework of neo-liberal globalisation. New ICTs have the potential to alter knowledge-sharing dramatically. This means that the excluded can freely access information resources for empowerment. However, such potential threatens vested interests, who have earlier benefited by controlling information, and stand to lose enormously unless information is kept scarce. These interests have pushed for an intellectual property regime that is harsh and unfair. IPR is the key issue in the ICT sector today. Software monopolies such as Microsoft make huge profits by selling copies of software, thus incurring zero incremental cost of production. What is sold is only the license to use the software and not the software itself. This means buyers cannot make changes to the software as they may require. Advocates of free and open-source software counter this by promoting the sharing of software applications that can be modified by users. The open-source movement aims to provide an alternative to the existing intellectual property regime. 2.1.3 Work in the Information Economy New ICTs are part of and influence the larger economic process of globalisation, which impacts men and women across the globe. In the new economy, ICTs have enabled new forms of work organisation and a new global division of labour. For developing countries, the ICT industry offers employment opportunities as jobs are relocated, but the current rules of the game in the information economy do not guarantee equitable growth. Global production and distribution processes, supported by ICTs, actually mean that most activity continues to be controlled by transnational companies (TNCs) based in the North. Specific activities do take place in the South, but only in limited domains, and concentrated in particular geographic areas (Sassen 1997). Most developing countries perceive the IT sector as an opportunity for rapid job creation. However, a majority of call centres and data entry facilities – the segments where employment increase is maximum − are located in few countries of the world – India, Mexico, Philippines, Jamaica, and also increasingly in China. Even within these countries such facilities are geographically heavily concentrated in few zones. The projected development of this sector seems to be no different from the route followed by the long-established garment and electronics sweatshops – poor wages, poor work conditions, the absence of unions, little to no skill or technology transfer, deskilling of the workforce, absence of career growth, and feminisation of the low-end jobs. Poor nations compete with each other to attract transnational corporations in a race to the bottom (Costanza-Chock 2003, Bidwai 2003). It is important to remember that redressing skewness in access is possible with affirmative action; however, the issue of skewed ownership and control needs to be addressed by appropriate regulatory frameworks at international and national levels. Needless to say, vested interests − powerful Northern economies and corporations pushing Intellectual Property regimes disadvantageous to the South – pose huge challenges to building equitable regulatory frameworks. (…) Women have entered the ICT arena, claiming jobs that technology is creating. However, as Hafkin and Taggart (2001) argue, in order to retain and build upon the employment gains associated with globalisation and information technology, women need to move into more technical or higher-level, better-paying jobs. For this, they need access to the educational and training opportunities necessary to equip them for the rapidly changing skill requirements. Policy should encourage girls and women to use ICTs early in education, and pursue higher studies in ICTs as well as technical careers − as scientists, researchers, administrators and educators. Women will also need to confront gender-based obstacles: the greater demands on them for the maintenance of household and family and the discrimination that women in all societies face within work environments. In addition to policies that ensure gender equality at the firm level, within the ICT sector, a strong role for state regulation of job security, insurance, maternity leave, and healthy and safe working conditions is vital for gender equality in the information economy. (…) Source: BRIDGE (development – gender) © NOTE: The article is an excerpt from the BRIGDE PUBLICATION “Gender and ICTs – an Overview Report”. See the full text at: http://www.bridge.ids.ac.uk/reports_general.htm BRIDGE can provide further gender and development material in English, through websites or by contacting them.
BRIDGE (development - gender)
[1] http://www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=695 [2] See http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v15/0212.html .
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