Gender and
technology in
developing
countries:
opportunities
and challenges
Nancy J. Hafkin, Ph.D.
Boston University, ‘73
Retired, United Nations
Gender equality &
information and
communications technology
(ICT)
– ICT offer flexibility of time and space, end isolation,
access to knowledge and productive resources.
– Women suffer most from limited time availability,
social isolation, and lack of access to knowledge and
productive resources.
• ICTs to empower women and promote gender equality
• Connection between ICTs and poverty alleviation
Overall aims of gender and ICTs
• Ensure that women as well as men, at all social levels and in all
countries, can access and use emerging information technologies
• Full inclusion of women in all aspects of ICT
• Possibility of more women globally to be technological innovators
Cinderella
• Works in the basement of
the knowledge society (if
she works in it at all)
– little opportunity to reap
its benefits.
– waits for "her prince" to
decide the benefits she
will receive.
Fluent
Cyberella
in the uses of technology
Comfortable
using & designing
computers, technology, communication
equipment, software,working in virtual
spaces
Devises
innovative uses for
technologies
Finds
information and knowledge to
improve her life and expand choices
Active
knowledge creator and
disseminator
More
than a user, designs information
and knowledge systems to improve all
aspects of her life.
Constraints to women’s full use of
information technology
Access
• Physical access related to gender: more
women live where infrastructure is weak
• Less disposable income to access facilities
• Difficulties posed by culture, gendered
division of labor in accessing public access
facilities
• Difficulties in mobility
• Women’s hours and skills levels need to be
addressed in providing access
• Losing out, even in the classroom
Content
• Little content available to meet women’s
information needs in developing countries
• Available content may not be in usable form
• Language/literacy barriers
• Need for tools to handle illiteracy, non-Latin
scripts
Technical skills
• Women have less access to education, to scientific and
technical education
• Leaky pipeline prevents women from tertiary-level S&T
education
• Support needed for women in IT skills development
The leaky pipeline in S&T education
• Gender gap widens
ascending the
educational ladder
• More girls now in
secondary and tertiary
education, but few in
S&T
• Attitudes about what is
appropriate for girls
• Girls’ lack of comfort or
interest in S&T
What we know about women, S&T
• Girls do not pursue science and technical studies at the same rate
as boys
– Most pronounced in physics, engineering, technology
– Representation of women declines at successive stages of
scientific and technological careers
• Parents’ attitudes towards boys’ and girls’ abilities a factor- lack of
family commitment to girls’ education
• Few differences between girls and boys on standardized measures
of math and science achievement
• Most recent (2010) research shows:
– Specific domains of gender inequities are responsible for gender gaps
in math.
– Gender equity in school enrollment, women’s share of research jobs,
and women’s parliamentary representation were the most powerful
predictors of cross-national variability in gender gaps in math. This
highlights the significance of increasing girls’ and women’s agency
cross-nationally.
Technology policy constraints
• Absence to
mentions of
gender in policy
• If mentioned, lip
service rather
than substance
• Belief that all
technology is
gender neutral
•Policy makers
lack awareness of
gender issues in
technical matters
•Gender
advocates lack
knowledge on
technology policy
issues
Gender aspects of technology issues
ICT issue
Gender aspect
Technology choice
Is the choice affordable to many women? It
is user-friendly, especially for neo-literates?
Regulation
Who provides what service and under what
conditions? Does it provide for universal
access and affordable services?
Sector liberalization
Competition can bring in needed investment
and force down end user prices to make
access more affordable to women.
Infrastructure
Will the infrastructure be deployed in areas
where women predominate?
Sexual exploitation of
women on the Internet
•
•
•
•
Trafficking of women through the Internet
Pornography
Sexual harassment/bullying
Use of Internet to perpetuate violence against
women
• Women need secure spaces online
• Delicate balance: protecting women’s rights
without instituting censorship
Gender and information technology data
• Comprehensive
gender ICT data
across a number
of countries do
not exist
• Without data
there is no
visibility; without
visibility there is
no priority
(UNDP)
Gender and ICTs: what statistics show
• Women’s participation generally lags behind that of
men
• Gender divide more pronounced in developing
countries
• Few reliable statistics available from developing
countries (e.g. no ITU stats on India)
• Even countries with high ICT development have
gender inequalities in use
• The gender divide and the overall digital divide do
NOT move in tandem
• Disputes argument that you don’t have to take care
of gender; it will take care of itself.
• Specific attention must be paid to gender to achieve
gender-positive results.
Relationship between Internet penetration
and proportion female Internet users
70
Internet penetration
% female
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Source: ITU, World Telecommunication Indicators 2004 and selected national sources
Examining Gender and IT projects: the
myth of gender neutrality
Looking at:
• Projects with a gender focus
• Projects intended to benefit men and women equally
• Projects without gender issues
• Projects that aimed to be gender transformational
• Questions:
– Did the project impact men and women differently?
– Was your access to resources and benefits different if you
were a man or a woman?
Project examples:
Cisco networking training for African
women – ECA
– Single sex training
helped, as well as
management and
gender awareness,
exposure to
development issues
– Need for follow up on
return to help trainees
overcome social and
cultural obstacles
National Graduate Registry
Panama
• Aim: a database for graduates
with the expectation of
increasing female employment at
professional level (2/3s of grads
are women)
– CVs gave full names and marital
status
– Project data not disaggregated by
sex
– Employers retained sex role
stereotypes
– No evidence that more women
got jobs
IT training at Kenyan center
• Spread over 2 weeks with breaks was more
difficult for women from abroad than men
• Local women couldn’t practice in the evenings
• Need to correct for different entry skill levels
• No awareness of gender and cultural factors
• Follow up to see that cultural factors do not
intervene, that women get to use training
Reform models for China Telecom
sector
• Assumption: Macro-economic policy projects in
technical areas are gender neutral
– In applying gender lens, researcher and bureaucrats
became aware of gender issues, led to questioning of
unstated assumptions (re e-commerce, decreased
workload, educational opportunities)
– Realization that women’s special needs and interests
needed to be covered in policy projects
– Need for gender analysis
– Participation of women in the project does not
guarantee benefits for women
Information system for small
producers: Peru
• Community information system defined for small
producers and local officials
– Assumption but lack of concern that “community”
was male
– Already marginalized, women felt more marginalized
when technology services went to men
– Realization that many small producers were women
– Difficulties in training as many women were illiterate
– In mixed-sex training, men mocked women’s abilities
India Health Care Providers: PDAs
• In Andra Pradesh PDAs were distributed to
local health assistants, who were women
• Community and users were not involved in
planning
• Local women had different health priorities
that national and district level health offices
• Men workers protested when technology was
distributed to women, demanded PDAs for
themselves, regardless of work utility
Some lessons from projects
• Access to and use of technology increased
women’s self esteem and their domestic and
community status
• While technology empowers, it also affects
and alters gender relations
• All projects have gender issues
More lessons . . .
• Technology is not gender neutral
• Technology is socially embedded; it operates
in a socio-cultural context
• Gender analysis and design is needed from
the beginning of projects
 Lack of consideration inevitably leads to problems
in the socio-cultural context
 Specific attention must be paid to gender in order
to achieve gender-positive results. “If you don’t
ask for gender, you don’t get gender.”
Newer technologies: it’s mobile, baby
• Gender, Development, Technology focus has
turned to cellular technology
• Enormous usage compared to Internet
• Mobile broadband growing
• Mobile networks coverage becoming near
universal
• Technology developments:
– Falling costs of smart phones
– Voice access to web
– Supercedes mobile disadvantage of limitation to
known contacts
M-pesa
(mobile money)
Cash transfers
Phones as wallets
• Emphasis on women owning, not sharing, phones
• Low cost phones, prepaid not contracts
• Development of relevant content: life-saving services for
Bottom-of-the-Pyramid women
• Technical training for women in phone use (beyond just
calling)
• Aim: women’s empowerment
Mobile phones: opportunities for
women
Positive impact on women’s
employment (South Africa)
Willingness of poor to spend large
income % on communication
 Women farmers: market prices, secure inputs
 Increased security for women
 Health applications
 Women see it as increased freedom (especially in
business), decreased tolerance of domestic abuse
 But, reassertion of patriarchy: negative reactions of
men to women and cellphones
The Knowledge
Society:
Measuring women’s
participation
Knowledge society: science, technology,
innovation, entrepreneurship:
Examples of Philippines, Thailand
Philippines
• Women do well in ICT
use, entrepreneurship,
higher education,
technical skills
• 58% Internet users
women
• More new women
entrepreneurs than men
• Increasingly more
women becoming
engineers
• High percentage of
women researchers
• Closed gender gap in
health and education
(only Asian country to
do so)
• But lack full economic
equality
– Women work
longer hours and for
lower wages
– One of world’s
highest workloads
compared to men’s
Thailand
• Women rank high in science
and technology
achievement, use of the
Internet, rate of
entrepreneurship,
particularly in innovative
areas
• But, very low level of
representation in
government
Conclusion
Conclusion: Women would do
even better in both Thailand
and Philippines if there were
more gender equality
.
Knowledge Society: Measuring
Women’s Contributions Globally
• To provide a framework for data analysis to achieve inclusive
knowledge society
• To encourage the mainstreaming of gender in data collection,
statistics and indicators for the knowledge society so that
gender issues can be taken into account in policy and action.
Based on:
• Absence of integrated data on women and knowledge society
• Concentration on developing countries where lack of data
most evident
• Data needed
– For policy makers to make informed decisions towards
competitive national knowledge society
– Taking full advantage of country’s human resources.
Basic assumptions
• Knowledge not only for economic growth but to
empower and develop all sectors of society (einclusion)
• Knowledge, including S&T knowledge, is also generated
from and transmitted outside formal education and
institutions
• Aims:
– not only women’s full participation in formal STI, but also
STI’s development and application of technologies for
social development, including energy use, food
production, clean water and sanitation
– Promotion of enterprise development and lifelong learning
opportunities in all sectors of society
Need for composite index
• Existing indices do not cover necessary ground
– ICT and STI frameworks do not address gender
issues or collect/utilize sex-disaggregated data
– Gender equality indexes do not address ICT, STI,
knowledge society issues
Organizing the Framework
Input indicators
(base conditions)
Outcome indicators
(Participation and
benefits)
Health
Social status
Economic status
Access to resources
Agency
Opportunity
Policy environment
Participation in:
KS decision making
Knowledge economy
Science, technology and
innovation
Lifelong learning
If you want to read more . . .
• Engendering the Knowledge Society:
Measuring Women's Participation
• http://www.orbicom.uqam.ca/projects/knowl
edge_society2007/2007orbicom_eng_know_s
oc.pdf
• Thank you.