Emerging issues

155 Pages·2006·0.97 MB·English

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Gender in the Information Society
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Emerging issues
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The information society has largely been driven and shaped

by a techno-deterministic vision that obscures its gendered S
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context. It is therefore imperative that the emerging landscape c
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of the information society is anchored within the broader e
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framework of gender equality, especially given its vast public y
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policy implications. This exercise requires gender equality
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advocates to recognize the urgency of grappling with the m
nuances of information society developments and steer the e
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discourse to ensure gender-just outcomes. g
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This publication features a series of papers that represent an g

early exploration of the challenges and opportunities for is
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actors committed to gender equality in the information
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society. It is meant to open up the debates that can pave the e
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way for a sustained engagement of gender activists with one
of the most powerful contemporary social phenomena.
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Emerging issues
Edited by
Anita Gurumurthy, Parminder Jeet Singh,
Anu Mundkur and Mridula Swamy
Asia-Pacific Development
Information Programme
The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) is an initiative of the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) that aims to promote the development and application of information
and communications technology for sustainable human development in the Asia-Pacific region.
© UNDP-APDIP 2006
For more information please contact:
UNDP ASIA-PACIFIC DEVELOPMENT INFORMATION PROGRAMME
Regional Centre in Bangkok
3rd Floor, United Nations Service Building
Rajdamnern Nok Avenue
Bangkok 10200, Thailand
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.apdip.net
ELSEVIER
A Division of Reed Elsevier India Private Limited
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Sriniwas Puri, New Delhi 110 065, India
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://asia.elsevier.com
ISBN: 81-312-0632-7
This publication is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license. For full details of the
license, please refer to the following: http://www.creative-commons.org/licenses/by/2.5/legalcode
The analysis and recommendations of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United
Nations Development Programme nor do they necessarily reflect the views of the institutions with
which the authors are affiliated.
Academic Press, Butterworth-Heinemann, Digital Press, Elsevier, Focal Press, Morgan Kauffman, North
Holland, Pergamon are the Science and Technology Imprints of Elsevier.
Printed and bound in India
Table of Content
List of Abbreviations v
Foreword vii
Preface ix
Part 1: Gender at WSIS 1
Women, Media and ICTs in UN Politics: Progress or Backlash? 3
Heike Jensen
Civil Society and Feminist Engagement at WSIS: Some Reflections 15
Anita Gurumurthy and Parminder Jeet Singh
WSIS: Some Reflections on Emerging Discourses and Frameworks 27
Radhika Lal
Part 2: Gender Perspectives on ICT4D 33
The Right to Information and the Information Society 35
Nikhil Dey
Expanding Women’s Capacities through Access to ICTs: An Overview from Sri Lanka 42
Leelangi Wanasundera
Using ICTs to Bridge the Digital Divide 53
Usha Vyasulu Reddi and Rukmini Vemraju
Empowering Communities through IT: Multi-stakeholder Approaches
and the Akshaya Experiment 65
Aruna Sundararajan
Gender Issues in the Indian Software Outsourcing Industry 74
Carol Upadhya
Part 3: Women and Media in the Information Society 85
Local Media and Women’s Identity Articulation 87
Tasneem Ahmar
Community Media and Women: Transforming Silence into Speech 96
Vinod Pavarala, Kanchan K. Malik and Janardhan Rao Cheeli
Diversity as Casualty: Gender in the Time of Media Globalization 110
Ammu Joseph
Part 4: Reflections on the Seminar 123
Part I : Gita Sen 125
Part II : Nivedita Menon 130
About the Authors 137
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Gender in the Information Society: Emerging issues
List of Abbreviations
AID Alternative for India Development
AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
AP Plan Of Action (of WSIS)
APCWNSP Association of Progressive Communications Women’s Networking Support
Program
APDIP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme
CBO Community-Based Organization
CD Compact Disk
C-DIT Centre for the Development of Information Technology
CENWOR Centre for Women’s Research
CIO Chief Information Officer, Chief Innovation Officer
COLLIT Commonwealth of Learning Literacy
CSO Civil Society Organization
CSR Corporate Social Responsibility
CSW Commission on the Status of Women
DAW Division for the Advancement of Women
DAWN Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era
DDS Deccan Development Society
DOI Digital Opportunities Initiative
DoP Declaration of Principles (of WSIS)
DOT Digital Opportunity Task
EGM Expert Group Meeting
GAD Gender and Development
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
HR Human Resources
IANWGE Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality
ICT Information and Communications Technology
ICT4D Information and Communications Technology for Development
ICTA Information and Communication Technology Agency (of Sri Lanka)
ILO International Labour Organization
IP Intellectual Property
IPR Intellectual Property Rights
IS Information Society
IT Information Technology
ITES Information Technology Enabled Services
ITU International Telecommunication Union
JDCP Jhabua Development Communication Project (of India)
KLJB Kutch Log Ji Bani (The voice of Kutch – a radio channel)
KMVS Kutch Mahila Vikas Sanghatan (a CSO)
LSGI Local Self-Government Institution
MAM Mobile Access Mode
MDG Millennium Development Goal
MKSS Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (a CSO)
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Gender in the Information Society: Emerging issues
NASSCOM National Association of Software and Services Companies (of India)
NGO Non Governmental Organization
NIAS National Institute of Advanced Studies (of India)
NWICO New World Information and Communication Order
PPP Public-Private Partnership
PREAL Project in Radio Education and Adult Literacy
SEWA Self Employed Women’s Association
SITE Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (of India)
SME Small and Medium Enterprise
SMS Short Message Service
TC Tunis Commitment
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNESCAP United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
VAP Village Access Point
WAD Women and Development
WID Women in Development
WiFi Wireless Fidelity
WiPLL Wireless Internet Protocol in Local Loop
WIPO World Intellectual Property Organization
WLL Wireless in Local Loop
WSIS World Summit on the Information Society
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Gender in the Information Society: Emerging issues
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On behalf of UNIFEM South Asia, it gives me great pleasure to present this compilation of papers,
which was shared at the South Asia Seminar on Gender in the Information Society.
The Seminar, which was held to engender the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
process, was the collective effort of diverse agencies. The partnerships of IT for Change, who
envisioned and organized the intervention, Development Alternatives with Women for a New
Era and Centre for Public Policy-Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, which held the
seminar, and UNIFEM South Asia and the UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information
Programme, which collaborated and catalyzed a tremendous mobilization. It brought together
a widespread community of thinkers and practitioners, experienced in gender and
development and women’s rights issues, to jointly examine the issues of Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) and gender – in development and in the information society.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate and acknowledge the thinkers, activists,
organizations, writers as well as women in the media in this region, who contributed so
abundantly and powerfully to a dialogue that needed their voices and perceptions.
With gender issues peripheral in the information society, the World Summits on this issue have
provided opportunities for engendering them. As an advocate for gender and women’s rights,
UNIFEM has supported these processes in an effort to influence and integrate gender
perspectives in every facet of the Summits. In this joint effort, we were able to strategically use
the Seminar to prepare for the final phase of the WSIS at Tunis,1 formulating recommendations
and promoting a feminist engagement in the interface of issues pertaining to the new economy.
It is encouraging to see that these recommendations led to a strengthening of perspective
building and were successful in influencing the Tunis Commitment document.
Even though the ICT sector was first made visible as an effective instrument for advocacy on
gender issues at Beijing, it still remains secluded. At Beijing, women’s organizations had
successfully lobbied for the need for involving women in decision-making and in the
formulation of policies related to the development of new ICTs, in order to participate fully in
1 This seminar was held in April 2005, when the preparatory meetings for the Tunis phase of WSIS were underway.
The Summit was held in Tunis in November 2005.
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Gender in the Information Society: Emerging issues
their growth and impact. However, the progress made on the commitments undertaken, has
so far, been meagre. Though ICTs are playing an increasingly vital role in the development
paradigm and are recognized as an integral means for transformation, it is clear that
development in ICTs is far from equal.
The access of women and girls to ICTs remains limited even today. Even in situations of poverty,
where both women and men share equally the lack of access to the gains from technology,
the poverty of exclusion exacerbates the situation for women. For them the problem is
compounded by other obstacles, such as social and cultural norms that constrain their mobility
and access to resources. There is a compelling need now to direct efforts towards enabling
women to utilize the new avenues opened by ICTs for social, economic and political
empowerment. The greatest challenge that we face is that of harnessing ICTs for social
transformation.
Rooted in the ground realities of women, the Seminar was more than a debate about ICTs. It
was a discussion and strategy, which focused around the larger economic and social context
in which technology is located. It brought to the table, frameworks of analysis and action that
are rooted in national and sub-national experiences in the region. The implications of economic
globalization, the changing face of women’s work and international division of labour in the
new economy, the intellectual property regime and the appropriation of local knowledge by
corporations, the media industry and the narrow-banding of information production, were
some of the key areas that were added to the existing parameters of the information societies’
debate, and built into the discussions around the WSIS agenda.
This selection of papers, which were presented at the Seminar, makes available a valuable
body of information on areas, which have, so far, not been central to the dialogue on ICTs and
development. Highlighting the developing interplay between economic opportunities and
socio-cultural hierarchies, they are special because of the unique lens that has been used to
treat them. They provide an admirable resource for fresh thinking and learning on issues that
continue to burn and which beg solutions and answers.
In addition, the publication provides an excellent tool for advocacy. We hope that it will be
used widely by diverse stakeholders and development practitioners, to engender the
information society. Our hope is that these papers will provide a powerful lens for meaningful
and empowering insights, to assist women in South Asia, and define the parameters of the
development and rights debates. What they already do is provide a magnificent trigger for
informed advocacy in the region around ICT and gender.
Chandni Joshi
Regional Programme Director
UNIFEM South Asia Regional Office
New Delhi
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Gender in the Information Society: Emerging issues
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This collection of papers comes from a seminar organized by IT for Change in April 2005. The
impetus for the seminar came from the pressing need to engender the emerging policy
discussion spaces concerning the information society, specifically the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS), with feminist perspectives that are rooted in Southern realities.
The first phase of WSIS was over in 2003, and the second was held in November 2005. Gender
equality had been established as a normative overarching principle in the context of
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the WSIS discussions and in the Geneva
outcome documents. But towards Phase 2 of WSIS, which was to make decisions of significance
at practical levels, the task of articulating a feminist critique of the emerging information society,
and sizing up what it means for development and rights through a gender lens, was urgent.
This required that gender advocates grasp the complexities of the vast and evolving information
society arena to bridge analysis and action.
Further, given the extremely peripheral involvement in Phase 1 of WSIS of those Southern
feminists who had the rich experience of representing local struggles and interests in global
governance fora to assert the rights of and seek gains for the most disadvantaged women in
global policy, it was even more critical to mobilize gender perspectives that could highlight
Southern agenda in Phase 2 of WSIS.
The seminar ‘Gender Perspectives on the Information Society: South Asia Pre-WSIS Seminar’
was an effort to engage with this task on hand. It was organized by IT for Change, in partnership
with Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and the Centre for Public
Policy, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. The seminar was supported by UNIFEM
and the UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme.
Given that many feminist activists and scholars in the South Asia region were still uninitiated
into the WSIS process, the seminar provided a space to seek their engagement with information
society issues – to examine how these issues have been framed, how they link to ‘old’ debates
on development and rights and to come up with directions for future engagement. The seminar
also sought to encourage the Information and Communications Technology for Development
(ICT4D) community, to present gendered perspectives from the ground.
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