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 o

• 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.

Source(s):
Development Research Insights issue #25, 'Net gains or Net dreams?' Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 1998-July-29

Further Information:
Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi
Gender, Communications Technology and Globalisation Research Group
Centre for Mass Communication Research,
University of Leicester
104 Regent Road,
Leicester LEI1 7LT
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 116 252 3861/3
Fax: +44 (0) 116 252 3874
Contact the contributor: as19@le.ac.uk

Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester