Promote gender equality and empower women

This piece was written by Anuradha Dhar and myself, way back in 2005, and published in i4d magazine, March 2005 issue, under a creative commons licence.


The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3 to "promote gender equality and empower women", aspires to give women an equal stand in the society, which now disregards many women's rights and women do not afford the same rights as men do.

The lives of women and men, the work they do, the income they receive, the roles they are given and the relationships that they share are all shaped by social norm and traditions which treat women and men differently. Such norms and traditions are manifested in laws, institutions and economic and social structures, such as the family and the job market. The complex web of cultural and social set up results in economic and political marginalisation of women and it starts to show early when girls are not allowed to go to school or they drop out of school due to various societal pressures.

Two-thirds of the world's illiterate population is female http://www.millennium campaign.org. Without the basic foundation of education, women face limited opportunities in future and become vulnerable to abuse, violence and discrimination. Keeping this in mind, Millennium Declaration has given utmost importance to education and this is evident by the quantifiable target they have placed to achieve goal 3. The target aims to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005 and in all levels of education no later than 2015.

With a goal to 'achieve gender equality', and looking at this target it seems to be narrow, leaving space for much more that needs to be done. But one also cannot ignore the fact that this is the only declaration, which has tried to put a figure to what we are trying to achieve as compared to many other previous international action plans and statements. Besides the target, it also has indicators to measure the achievement. This includes measuring the ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education, ratio of literate women to men in ages 16 - 24, share of women in wage employment in non- agricultural sector and proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments. This calls on all countries to achieve the target for the development of nations.

United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), United Nations Education Scientific Cultural and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO), Commission on the Advancement of Women (CAW) are some of the institutions, which are working on diverse issues to achieve gender equality and empowerment.

Gender equality in the Information society

To achieve all the above objectives, ICT can play a crucial role in skill development in women, to deliver educational and literacy programmes targeted to poor women, bring awareness and influence public opinion about equal rights of women, give them economic opportunities, lend a voice to fight against discrimination and most important lead them to empowerment. But the barriers still persist.

A prevalent gender socio-cultural divide is one of the key reasons why women are underrepresented in the information society. Though lack of infrastructure is a problem to all, irrespective of gender, its impeding access is acute for women due to poverty, illiteracy and language barriers.

Though the socio-cultural conditions might differ somewhat regionally but a grim picture exists worldwide. In October 2004, the Seventh African Regional Conference on Women was held in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. It was an African regional decade review of the implementation of the Dakar and Beijing Platform of Action (Beijing +10). In the conference, the Economic Commission for Africa stated, "women's access to ICTs in Africa is limited. Poverty, lack of electricity and limited infrastructure in rural areas, is a hindrance to the spread of ICTs". It reported that Burkina Faso, Mali, Uganda and Tanzania have national policies on ICTs dedicated to the promotion of women and gender issues. The report also gives a positive sign as the number of women in ICTs and the media in general in Republic of Guinea has doubled to 39 percent of journalists; while Tunisia has 7 feminine newspaper titles and 34.38% of people working in the media are women.

ICTs (including radio, television, mobile telephony, computer, Internet) can empower women and help them surmount gender inequality by raising awareness of their social and political status and creating new economic opportunities. However this potential can be realised only when gender dimensions of equitable access conditions, policy framework and action oriented strategies undertaken at several levels including the MDGs, International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the outcome of the Twenty-Third Special session of the General Assembly (2000) – the Outcome Document, among others, are implemented and addressed appropriately.

Nevertheless there are examples where regardless of these socio-cultural limiting elements, ICTs have opened the window of opportunities for women. The Bangladesh village phone programme where Grameen Telecom provided loans to Bangladeshi women micro-entrepreneurs to purchase and operate cellular phones is one such example. It resulted in an increase in the status and income of the Bangladeshi poor women and also increased the number of women who use telephones in the villages for work. It was a unique initiative because it not only brought economic upliftment of women but also brought valuable knowledge services like health information in village houses. The NGO Grameen Foundation is now replicating a similar model in Uganda by working with micro-finance institutions that train and support the women micro-entrepreneurs in rural communities (http://www.gfusa.org).

ICTs can play an important role in the formal and non-formal education of girls and women, particularly through distance education. One example is India's "Distance education for women's development and empowerment" jointly operated by the Department of Women and Child Development and the Indira Gandhi National Open University. The programme provides a Certificate level course based on a multi-media training package to make women's self-help groups sustainable through developing decision-making ability and resource management skills in 150 low literacy districts. This is a perfect case where ICTs have been able to take relevant education suiting the communities' needs to their doorsteps, thus overcoming the cultural and language barriers they otherwise would have faced traveling to cities to get similar education.

Discrimination against women exists in one form or another. The sex ratio in countries like India is skewed. The child sex ratio (in the 0-6 age group) has been dropping alarmingly. From 962 (the number of females per 1000 males) in 1981, it dropped to 945 in 1991 and 927 in 2001. The overall sex ratio for India is 933 females per 1000 males. This situation of a strongly male biased sex ratio is attributable to increasing female foeticide or neglect of the girl children. This is one area where ICTs can play a vital role.

There is a lot of discussion happening on gender inequality and access barriers but quantitative evidence to support these theories is very limited. Collection and availability of latest gender-disaggregated data is a prime concern, which needs to be addressed urgently. ICTs can help in the collection and analysis of data on gender discrimination. Based on the data collected, policies can be framed, which are directed towards the welfare of women.

Finally, equitable access to ICTs and the autonomy to receive and produce information relevant to women's needs and concerns are central to women's empowerment, and to the construction of an Information society for all.

We could have made the project work... but for babu's indecisiveness!

Having worked extensively across different jobs and assignments, ranging from government, public institution, international research, UN, coordination units, NGOs, funding agency, and now eGov Consulting services... I am bewildered by the pace of the Government of India. To say the least, the way the Bureaucrats dilly-dally and wish away decision making.

To make matters worse, they are interrupted by "very important", "urgent" and "critical" Parliament work at least five or six times in a year! That generally translates to getting no regular work done, or engage in any serious matter that requires the bureaucrats to apply their minds.

Going by the pace, it seems many an innovative projects have died a natural death so have many orders and commands. It is very easy for government to "SQUAT" over files, or make them disappear. I remember when my father worked for the Government, thirty years ago, the story was way different. No documents went from one office to another without proper diary-ing, and no documents really got lost or were dealt with carelessly. Today, since we have the luxury to take out another "print", do several "photocopy" or even scan and store in pdf.. we can get away with carelessness. The number of documents that tend to disappear from files is not a joke.

But the babus.. yeah they love their NOTE SHEETS... the green-ruled letter sized bunch of paper that is the holy script... of the babugiri's wisdom recording and summarizing thoughts... (or thoughtlessness)...

When it comes to making decisions, the big bosses say, "please speak" or "please discuss" and make the junior officer write what they will not have originally thought of or articulated. But the signatures (in case an axe needs to fall) will be that of the junior officer...

How much of national tax payers money the government machinary wastes!!!!!!!

I have in the last nine months... gained little but unfortunately the Government has also not made use of my expertise nor skills adequately... Whither good bureaucrats! Is the PM listening???