Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and women

Digitization is the process of converting information into a digital format. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is an effective tool in efficient governance, good governance, sustainable development, social empowerment and in developing human resources. In modern times, evolution of new forms of technologies makes the lives of the people better and more comfortable in several ways.

Huge chunk of working women in India comes under the rural and unorganized sectors of the society. Majority of them face inequality in access to and participation in communications systems. Technology is often confined to elite group of society.

Advantages

ICTs can improve women’s activities in the field of trade, governance, education, health as well as in informal sector. Teleporting, flexi time, work from home opportunities are some of the gender based dimensions of ICTs.

Many international policy documents have portrayed the gender implications of new technologies. The “Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women” has stated that women should be empowered by enhancing their access to information technology (IT).

The following are some of the advantages offered by ICT to women:

• ICT has given women the opportunity to work from home. It has given the freedom to people to operate from the comfort of their own houses.
• It is helping in knowledge dissemination and enables women to know about the day to day happenings of the country as well as in other countries.
• Quality of education has increased. Literacy level, awareness and confidence levels among women have improved significantly. Learning has become hassle free and enables women to learn at their own comfort after finishing household chores. E-governance initiatives have made life of women easy. It is now easy to get service like birth certificates, income certificates and all necessary certificates online. Loss of wage and bribes and the requirement to travel long distances to get the certificates are all eliminated.
• Emails, chat and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) have connected people in rural areas to connect with their kith and kin in abroad and far away places. Some people use these services to get job opportunity abroad.
• Timely information through facilities like video conferencing for getting information from experts of different fields like agriculture, eye care, astrology, nutritional information, prenatal care are available to women especially Muslim women who restrict themselves to their houses can now freely get information available over internet.

Challenges

Firstly, women fall into the category of less informed who have poor access to information and information on many matters is restricted for cultural, social, economic and geographic reasons. The main hurdle that prevents women from accessing information is illiteracy.

Secondly, civil society and government have not still utilizing the full potential of ICT in women empowerment. Hence, they are not very much in creating enabling frameworks and spaces for the growth of ICT infrastructure.

Thirdly, ICTs come at a financial cost. This is major hurdle for the penetration of ICT at the community as well as at the individual level. This is compounded by the fact women in India have on an average meagre income and do not have decision making power in the household to invest in these technologies.

Fourthly, in addition, penetration of ICTs also depends upon the physical infrastructure requirements like electricity, telephone lines, internet gateways etc. Given the present state of infrastructure in rural areas, the facilities appear to be more skewed towards the urban areas making women one of the marginalized groups.

Fifthly, linguistic barriers prevent knowledge available on the internet to get disseminated to the poorest and illiterate sections of the society. There is very little content available in the vernacular languages.

Sixthly, there is a lack of trained human resources to handle technology and networking issues in hinterlands.

Way forward

ICTs are for everyone and women should have to be an equal beneficiary in par with men. Most pressing need for women is awareness through dissemination of information irrespective of whether they are literate or not. For this, ICT models need to create to bridge the poverty gap. This can happen only if there are concerted efforts on the part of the government agencies. Government needs to create these opportunities and provide incentives for women to participate and benefit from these networking processes. Access to ICTs should not be restricted only to the upper strata of the society but should also flow freely even to the lower strata of the society. It should not be forgotten that ICT in convergence with other forms of communication has the potential to touch the lives of women who hitherto have not been reached by any other media and there by empowering them to participate in the social and economic progress about the issues affecting them.

Though many women have careers in the communication sector only few have reached positions at the decision making level due to lack of gender sensitivity and the failure to eliminate the gender based stereotyping. Government should take efforts to improve the image of women by prohibiting the continued projection of negative and degrading images of women in various communication media like electronic, print, visual, and audio.

The continued projection of negative and degrading images of women in media communications – electronic, print, visual and audio – must be changed. Regulatory mechanisms need to be put in place to create and strengthen approaches that eliminates gender-biased programming.

Government should set up Multifunctional Converged Applications Community Centres (MCACs) at panchayat and block levels to derive benefits from services like tele-education, telemedicine, internet access etc.