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March 1998 Insights Issue #25Courting the Web: what's in it for women's wants and wares?A big concern that overshadows the spread and
increasing use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs)
is the knowledge gaps they can create or widen, most obviously between
North and South but also significantly between men and women. Even in
hi-tech Western societies, it is evident that women's access to ICTs
lags way behind men's; this lag is more pronounced in the South, where
gender bias can be a powerfully disadvantaging force.
Awareness is growing internationally of a global feminisation of
poverty, the gendered aspects of human rights law and the notion that
rape can function as an instrument of war. It is acknowledged, too, that
exclusion of women from the tables of political and military power
hinders democratisation and development. An array of global instruments
now draws attention to the specific dynamics of gender inequality, and
proposes ways to counter it. The Platform for Action arising from the
Beijing Women's Conference includes demands that women gain equal access
to education, as well as to:
resources, employment, markets and trade. information and communication technologies power structures and decision-making
Scant mention was made of ICTs, apart from a broad need 'to increase
the participation of women [in] expression and decision-making in and
through the media and new technologies of communication'. The recent
Global Knowledge '97 Conference sponsored by the World Bank and the
Government of Canada was heavily censured for initial lack of attention
to gender issues and absence of women speakers. Online reaction drew in
1100 correspondents from more than 65 countries, 25 percent from
developing countries, even though the latter muster only two percent of
overall Internet traffic. If women really do act as information
'translators' for others in their physical locality, then such uses of
the Net can articulate the global and the local. So gender became key to
GK '97! Its Canon on Gender, Partnerships and ICT Development recognised
'the importance of new ICTs as a medium for gathering and distributing
our shared knowledge and heritage'. It states that all facets of
engineering, design, development and delivery of the new ICTs must
embrace gender equity or risk becoming ineffective. Among priority
actions it urges are:
incorporating gender analysis in all scientific and
technological policy research developing and funding evaluations of the impact of
new ICTs on women's communication needs providing training, access and delivery systems,
including versions developed for women.
It grows ever clearer that there can be no real development without
women. Significant obstacles still remain, but the new ICTs and projects
like Women on the Net (UNESCO and Society for International Development)
are helping women create participatory and culturally diverse new spaces
for dialogue and for political, economic and cultural activities that
may be hard to access in their traditional forms. Women are proving
adept networkers at all levels from local to global, but national and
international policies still need to take this into account. 'Educate a man and you educate an individual; educate a woman and you
educate the family and the nation.' Virtual Souk T: 0116 252 3861/3 |
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