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African
women and ICTs: Investigating technology, gender and empowerment
Edited by Ineke Buskens and Anne Webb
2009
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Introduction
This type of
reflection may not seem very technologically advanced, but with
the relationships between information and communication technologies
(ICTs), women's empowerment, gender discrimination, access,
entrepreneurship, advocacy and so forth being so multidimensional,
we had to start with centring ourselves. We were undertaking a momentous
task in trying to better understand how and if women's empowerment
is being impacted by, and is impacting, their use of and contributions
to ICTs; we were setting out to explore the external, structural
barriers women experience, as well as the internal/conceptual factors
which prevent or enable them to use ICTs to their advantage, and
the strategies they use to overcome impediments (Buskens et al.
2004).
The insights gained from
this exploration form the content of this book. The authors bring
together a questioning of the place of ICTs in the lives of women
in Africa who are getting on with the daily struggle for greater
autonomy and equality with the perceptions of the women themselves,
and a context that predominantly focuses attention on the promises
of ICTs for development rather than the ongoing divisive inequalities.
For three years
fourteen research teams (involving about thirty women and men) in
twelve countries pursued their research interests. Annual in-person
research training and working sessions, and a steady flow of virtual
discussion, questioning, feedback and resources, supported this
process. The researchers conducted their studies in their own geographical
regions, in some cases in their communities, or at their workplaces,
in local languages and, sometimes, with themselves included among
the respondents. They delved into issues they were drawn to due
to their own experiences, interests and commitment to women's
equality and social justice, within the overarching theme of the
GRACE (Gender Research in Africa into ICTs for Empowerment) project.
The results, we think,
are impressive for the depth of knowledge and understanding gained
about women's realities and the meanings they give to those
realities. They are also impressive in terms of revealing the potential,
if there is the political will among decision-makers, to counter
the current situation globally, which sees women benefiting less
from the information society than men and also contributing less
to it (Huyer et al. 2005). This situation is problematic if societies
as a whole are to benefit from ICTs and use them to further their
development, and if the vision of development pursued is to equitably
reflect and fulfil the interests and needs of the population, not
only of those in positions of power.
Unearthing the meanings
during the research process, and then understanding their significance,
also required centring ourselves. The ostrich-egg exercise was used
more than once, as were other self-reflection practices. We primarily
used qualitative research techniques, as these yield in-depth data
and enable us to reveal various dimensions and aspects of phenomena.
The research questions and methodologies and the research training,
as well as the ongoing mentoring and support programme accompanying
the research, were grounded in the principles of critical emancipatory
research (Buskens 2002; Buskens and Earl 2008).
The methods used in each
case were identified by the authors as the best suited to learning
about the lives and the thinking of their respondents. The respondents
were approached as active agents in determining their own reality,
rather than as victims of their situation. This may seem to contradict
the point that women's lives are not well understood and are
not setting ICT development directions; however, we wanted to find
out how women understood their current situations, we wanted them
to think beyond their current realities and to consider what needed
to be in place for them to pursue their visions. To do this sort
of reflection and thinking women had to see themselves as having
the capacity for action on their own behalf (Buskens 2002, 2006;
Buskens and Earl 2008; Hannan 2004; Kabeer 2003). It is this sort
of thinking which produces practical, functional knowledge that
can lead to change.
But making sense of that
knowledge also requires taking into account the norms and values
of our societies that shape our consciousness and behaviour. It
is not a simple matter to become aware of the factors shaping our
perspectives and values, nor is it easy to visualize a reality that
would transcend our own conscious knowing and imagining. But this
is the challenge undertaken by the authors in this volume -
to structure their research, and then their own analysis and interpretation,
to try to make sense of the research participants' perceptions
and pursuit of empowering change in the context of their current
realities and their dreams. This required heightened reflexivity
on the part of the authors as they worked within their own sociocultural
milieu.
Working in familiar environments
facilitated building rapport with research participants, and recognition
of local specificities, but the orientation of recognizing in the
research context and in oneself as a researcher the normalized social,
cultural, gender, economic (and so forth) relations and assumptions
is not simple. As empowered ICT users the authors also hoped that
the benefits they were experiencing were shared by others. As would
an 'outsider' be, the authors working as 'native
anthropologists' (Rodriguez 2001) were confronted with the
task of revealing and questioning their own assumptions and biases,
becoming aware of their own lenses, and managing to 'make
the normal anthropologically strange' (Buskens 2006, 2002).
This condition of self-awareness or reflexivity is a key quality
of the qualitative research approach engaged.
Particular self-reflection
practices contributed to the authors revealing connections between
words and actions, even when on the surface the two seemed at odds.
As a centring and self-awareness process, and to increase their
capacity to recognize the multiple layers of consciousness and the
associated layers of meaning, the authors practised a process developed
by Ineke called the Transformational Attitude Interview (Buskens
2008). It provides a process for in-depth interviewing that reveals
experiences, values and dreams, and the discrepancies between them.
In exploring what it would take for the desired reality to become
attainable, barriers (both within us and external) are recognized
and the strengths and conditions needed to be coherent with the
desired vision of the world identified.
Unsettling the hierarchy?
In the following chapters
the authors see ICTs as tools that can help people transform their
realities. As with earlier forms of information technologies, we
do not see ICT products as chan ging inequitable systems and values.
ICT is socially constructed, 'as an artifact of a particular
environment, created by particular stakeholders for particular purposes'
(Heeks 2002: 5). While those purposes may or may not be explicit,
they are 'formulated within a broader discourse of modernization
and development, which is based on the assumption that a deficiency
in [Western] knowledge is partly responsible for under development'
(Schech 2002: 13) in the developing world. This, however, is an
assumption at once arrogant and naive, glossing, as it does, over
the political-economic realities and relationships that hold the
'developed' and the 'developing world' captive
to each other.
It is furthermore generally
recognized that the nature and direction of the information society's
development is not grounded in the realities of women, particularly
women who experience poverty as well as gender discrimination, and
who do not hold positions of power in the public realm (Hafkin and
Huyer 2006; Huyer et al. 2005). Currently, the limited documentation
of gender issues in relation to the impact of ICTs 'makes
it difficult, if not impossible, to make the case to policymakers
for the inclusion of gender issues in ICT policies, plans and strategies.
As the UNDP puts it, "without data, there is no visibility;
without visibility, there is no priority" (cited in Huyer
and Westholm 2000)' (ibid.: 50). The investigations in GRACE
demonstrate the complexity of gender inequalities perpetuated in
ICT environments and currently only sparsely examined from the perspective
of the women users (ibid.; Sciadas 2005).
While we recognize ICTs
can be used to enhance our lives and contribute to our well-being,
effective use of time, economic development and so forth, they can
also exacerbate gendered life situations, relationships and images
and thus play a conservative, reactionary role. As such the crux
of the matter is not so much the issue of access and affordability,
although these are significant factors; it is more a question of
experiencing the right and having the space for self-determination.
ICTs create different
time and space coordinates, but what comprises space for self-determination
is not unequivocal; it holds different meanings and different descriptions
in different contexts. Further, the use of ICTs to enhance one's
life presupposes a measure of control over one's space and
time.
The chapters
The authors in this volume
raise a number of questions from their understandings of the perspectives
and experiences of the women using ICTs who were involved in their
research. The authors look at what is affecting the women's
use of the ICTs available to them, and in some cases the effects
of lack of availability. They discuss a complex web of factors.
The research respondents
all had exposure to particular ICTs, such as cell phones, computers
and the Internet, CD-ROMs, and radio. How the women engaged with
the technology, and the possibilities they saw and/or pursued in
terms of accessing, using and controlling (in terms of the object
and the content) ICTs, the impact they experienced, and the implications
of those impacts when considered in their broader socio-economic,
cultural context, varied considerably, but also reveal certain overarching
questions vital to understandings of an equation of ICTs for development,
or for poverty reduction, or gender equality, or social justice.
We have made four groupings
of the respondents' options and choices in relation to their
use of ICTs, against the question of empowerment.
The women in the chapters
in Part One are affected by ICTs in a 'passive' way.
Their lives have been changed by the various technologies but they
are not at all or only in a very limited way able to access and
use these tools. These women's lack of access and use is related
to lack of infrastructure (including electricity and hardware),
poverty (their main priorities being involved with survival) and
illiteracy. These factors are often partly and sometimes completely
gender-related. For instance, in some contexts women were affected
by ICTs as the technologies had entered their realm through family
usage, community access and awareness of potential uses and benefits,
even when the women did not actively seek to utilize them. Some
technologies were found to be irrelevant, and some a 'mixed
blessing'.
The women respondents
in Part Two are benefiting from or would benefit from 'female-only'
spaces they create for themselves or which could be created for
them through and with ICTs. In these spaces they can find refuge,
express themselves, learn, network and trade. It seems that in certain
situations women's environments are so seriously gender imbalanced
that they do not get the opportunities to enhance their lives and
expand their contributions to their societies within existing physical
public spaces. The virtual ICT-created spaces would enable women
to enjoy and utilize new freedoms. By creating new forms of space
- using a cell phone when violence is perpetuated in isolating
physical spaces; creating supportive learning and work environments
that do not require entering the patriarchal public sphere; enhancing
existing advocacy networks - women are creating new options
and liberties for themselves. What, however, does the desire for
or pursuit of women-only spaces through the use of technologies
indicate about women's choices and engagement with ICTs? How
should we look at this desire to separate from rather than confront
existing power structures, from a gender equality perspective? Is
this an expression of empowerment for the women involved; are these
empowering options that they are creating?
In Part Three, women
use ICTs to increase control over their time and space in their
personal and professional lives. Their use of ICTs, however, often
challenges and upsets existing gender roles and the gendered 'norms'
within existing public spaces. Women experience independence through
the physical act of using ICTs, and create socio-economic gains.
At the same time, because their use of these technologies enables
them to handle their triple roles better, it can be argued that
ICT use contributes to the maintenance and possibly even strengthening
of the traditional gendered division of labour and thus to the general
gender imbalance. Some women, however, have been able through their
use of ICTs to not only enhance their lives, but also transform
their realities. They have transformed gendered images and conditions
in their personal relationships and their communities.
In Part Four the authors
speak with women who use ICTs to enhance their lives according to
their own designs. These women are creating new spaces for themselves
and others to live in, think in and work in, and they are affecting
public spaces in various ways at the household, local, national
and international levels. By changing their own conditions and breaking
'glass ceilings', they are becoming sources of inspiration
for others. These women vary from a CEO of a national ICT corporation,
who has access to extensive resources, to a hairdresser who needed
to save for two years to buy the cell phone that enabled her to
start her business and is now able to buy her own house and even
rent out a room.
These four groupings
can be approached as scenarios, as stations or stages. In every
stage, at every station or in every scenario, the question can be
raised as to what level of empowerment would need to be in place
for women to access and use a particular ICT or to participate in
spaces created with and through ICTs. Our research indicates that
there are certain 'empowerment thresholds' at every
level, comprising supportive internal and external factors in various
combinations. Yet at every level, even at the level at which women
would have the fewest choices because of general deprivation of
basic necessities (such as electricity), women would express their
agency. Amartya Sen states: 'nothing, arguably, is as important
today in the political economy of development as an adequate recognition
of political, economic and social participation and leadership of
women'. Yet at the same time, he admits that the 'extensive
reach of women's agency is one of the more neglected areas
of development studies, and most urgently in need of correction'
(Sen 1999: 203).
In bringing more clarity
to the way women exert their agency in relation to the use of ICTs,
how gender issues hinder or enhance women's access to and
use of ICTs, how women have accomplished their dreams in relation
to ICT use, what they needed in order to get there, what obstacles
they faced, and how they managed to overcome their internal and
external barriers, the authors contribute to a better understanding
of the potentials of ICT use. Being the powerful tools that they
are, ICTs deserve serious attention. Not to grant them this attention
could result in missed opportunities for women, and risk ICTs reinforcing,
unintentionally, women's discrimination and disempowerment.
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