GENDER-PROOFING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
In the 21st century, more than half the world's population remains disenfranchised from benefits that developed nations take for granted - including the learning and training available through information and communications technologies (ICTs). Problems run deeper than a simple lack of access: using a community centre's computer to view a government information web page on HIV/AIDS is useless if you can barely read. And in developing countries, women face many cultural and logistical barriers to their use of ICTs that are often more readily accessible to men.
These disenfranchised women live and work in poverty and poor health conditions, and with minimal basic education and skills. More than ever, the international community and individual national governments are realising the full human cost of this disparity through its negative impact on the economic and social bottom line.
Mandated to foster Commonwealth development through open and distance learning (ODL), the Commonwealth of Learning has been making a difference to women in developing countries for more than a decade. COL is currently focussing on identifying and dissolving gender barriers to ICT - helping to bridge the digital divide for women.
Many women in developing regions remain marginalised or excluded from basic education and life skills training. Many more are completely illiterate. The few that do enjoy access to basic education are increasingly finding themselves on the wrong side of a gender-based digital divide. More disturbingly, initial studies commissioned by COL found very little research that could help governments and development organisations deal with the issues.
Spurred by a clear need for more relevant information, COL hosted a series of regional expert symposiums in Barbados, India, New Zealand and Tanzania on gender barriers to ICT use, from 1998 - 2001, in collaboration with the British Council, Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the New Zealand Official Development Assistance (NZODA) programme (now the New Zealand Agency for International Development, NZAID).
At a final summary meeting on Gender Issues and Barriers to Information and Communications Technologies, held in Ottawa in June 2002 in partnership with Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), consultants and delegates from previous symposiums consolidated their findings and case studies into a synthesis report, Women and ICTs for Open and Distance Learning: Some experiences and strategies from the Commonwealth.
This definitive document is a guide for individuals in governments and organisations working to ensure women have equal access to ODL and ICT education and training, including COL and its worldwide network of development and education partners. The report's comprehensive study of gender barriers to ICT covers Commonwealth Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific, and includes suggestions and case studies on how to resolve the issues.
Although specifics are varied by region, some shared threads were low general literacy and ICT literacy levels; irrelevance of learning material available through ICT and ODL to women's livelihoods; socio-cultural barriers to women's education; and lack of female policy-makers, trainers and designers of ODL courses. Suggestion for corrective action include using audiovisual ICTs to circumvent illiteracy, introducing training relevant to women's traditional fields, conducting ICT awareness and promotional campaigns, collaboration with local or regional women's organisations and leaders, and lobbying for clear national policies on gender and development.
The synthesis report will also help inform specific discussion topics at an invitational Forum on ICTs & Gender: Optimising Opportunities, to be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in August 2003 (www.globalknowledge.org/gender2003). The forum's many co-organisers include COL, the Global Knowledge Partnership, the International Telecommunications Union and the Government of Malaysia's Ministry of Energy, Communications and Multimedia, Ministry of Women and Family Development and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission. Specific topics will include Confidence and Security in the Use of ICTs, Health and Education, and Entrepreneurship.
Among other gender-related initiatives, COL has trained, and placed digital video cameras in the hands of, female agricultural extension officers in Ghana; helped develop Women in Development distance education course modules for non-governmental organisations and developed a Gender Training Resources Collection (www.col.org/GenderResources) - a web database of gender mainstreaming support material - in collaboration with several United Nations organisations and the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Perhaps "men own all the technology," as a report at the Ottawa meeting from Zambian and Kenyan delegates suggests, but COL and its partners are working at means of offering women better ways to use ICT for the development of all.
The synthesis report, regional meeting reports and country presentations are all available on COL's web site.
Heldu Netocny / Panos Pictures
