Ewuraba - Professional African Women with Class and Style

Investigating Technology, Gender and Empowerment

edited by Ineke Buskens and Anne Webb

"Women in Africa are undeniably participating in the information and communication technology (ICT) revolution and they are doing so in many and varied ways; the changes that the use of these tools have brought about are visible everywhere. Furthermore, the prospects of ICTs for development and women’s empowerment seem promising. Yet women’s stories about their experiences and use of these tools are not heard: are their lives changing for the better because of these new technologies? If so, in what ways are they changing? Are there areas in which women could and should participate in this ICT revolution but are not, because they are women? How can women’s perspectives, insights and realities in relation to the use and potentials of ICTs be integrated into ICT policies that are currently being developed and implemented across the continent?"

This book was edited by Ineke Buskens and Anne Webb through the support of the Acacia Programme of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), which supports research in Africa on information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC). The book is based on research from a collective of African academics and activists known for their passionate involvement with women’s empowerment and ICTs. The perspectives of the women of Africa needed to be narrated and this knowledge needed to be brought to the world by African researchers.

The book is categorized in four parts:
The women in the chapters in Part One are affected by ICTs in a ‘passive’ way. Their lives have been changed by the various technologies but they are not at all or only in a very limited way able to access and use these tools. These women’s lack of access and use is related to lack of infrastructure (including electricity and hardware), poverty (their main priorities being involved with survival) and illiteracy. These factors are often partly and sometimes completely gender-related. For instance, in some contexts women were affected by ICTs as the technologies had entered their realm through family usage, community access and awareness of potential uses and benefits, even when the women did not actively seek to utilize them. Some technologies were found to be irrelevant, and some a ‘mixed blessing’.

The women respondents in Part Two are benefiting from or would benefit from ‘female-only’ spaces they create for themselves or which could be created for them through and with ICTs. In these spaces they can find refuge, express themselves, learn, network and trade. It seems that in certain situations women’s environments are so seriously gender imbalanced that they do not get the opportunities to enhance their lives and expand their contributions to their societies within existing physical public spaces. The virtual ICT-created spaces would enable women to enjoy and utilize new freedoms. By creating new forms of space – using a cell phone when violence is perpetuated in isolating physical spaces; creating supportive learning and work environments that do not require entering the patriarchal public sphere; enhancing existing advocacy networks – women are creating new options and liberties for themselves. What, however, does the desire for or pursuit of women-only spaces through the use of technologies indicate about women’s choices and engagement with ICTs? How should we look at this desire to separate from rather than confront existing power structures, from a gender equality perspective? Is this an expression of empowerment for the women involved; are these empowering options that they are creating? In Part Three, women use ICTs to increase control over their time and space in their personal and professional lives. Their use of ICTs, however, often challenges and upsets existing gender roles and the gendered ‘norms’ within existing public spaces. Women experience independence through the physical act of using ICTs, and create socio-economic gains. At the same time, because their use of these technologies enables them to handle their triple roles better, it can be argued that ICT use contributes to the maintenance and possibly even strengthening of the traditional gendered division of labour and thus to the general gender imbalance. Some women, however, have been able through their use of ICTs to not only enhance their lives, but also transform their realities. They have transformed gendered images and conditions in their personal relationships and their communities.

In Part Four the authors speak with women who use ICTs to enhance their lives according to their own designs. These women are creating new spaces for themselves and others to live in, think in and work in, and they are affecting public spaces in various ways at the household, local, national and international levels. By changing their own conditions and breaking ‘glass ceilings’, they are becoming sources of inspiration for others. These women vary from a CEO of a national ICT corporation, who has access to extensive resources, to a hairdresser who needed to save for two years to buy the cell phone that enabled her to start her business and is now able to buy her own house and even rent out a room.

These four groupings can be approached as scenarios, as stations or stages. In every stage, at every station or in every scenario, the question can be raised as to what level of empowerment would need to be in place for women to access and use a particular ICT or to participate in spaces created with and through ICTs. Our research indicates that there are certain ‘empowerment thresholds’ at every level, comprising supportive internal and external factors in various combinations. Yet at every level, even at the level at which women would have the fewest choices because of general deprivation of basic necessities (such as electricity), women would express their agency. Amartya Sen states: ‘nothing, arguably, is as important today in the political economy of development as an adequate recognition of political, economic and social participation and leadership of women’. Yet at the same time, he admits that the ‘extensive reach of women’s agency is one of the more neglected areas of development studies, and most urgently in need of correction’ (Sen 1999: 203).

In bringing more clarity to the way women exert their agency in relation to the use of ICTs, how gender issues hinder or enhance women’s access to and use of ICTs, how women have accomplished their dreams in relation to ICT use, what they needed in order to get there, what obstacles they faced, and how they managed to overcome their internal and external barriers, the authors contribute to a better understanding of the potentials of ICT use. Being the powerful tools that they are, ICTs deserve serious attention. Not to grant them this attention could result in missed opportunities for women, and risk ICTs reinforcing, unintentionally, women’s discrimination and disempowerment.

Read or Download the Book

Culled from Buskens, I. and Webb A. (2009). African Women and ICTs - Investigating Technology, Gender and Empowerment, International Development Research center, London: zed Books Ltd.