From Access to Effective Use: A Suggested Model for Ensuring Disadvantaged Arab Womens Engagement wi

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From Access to Effective Use A Suggested Model
for Ensuring Disadvantaged Arab Womens
Engagement with ICTs
Regional Symposium on Arab Women and ICTs
(Cairo, Egypt, 1719 December 2003)
Raida Al-Zubi, Information and Networking
Coordinator/ConsultantBRIDGE Development-Gender,
Institute of Development Studies, Sussex
University, UK (raida_at_jordanmail.com)
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Arab Digital Divide
Staggering Arab Digital Divide compared with
the world, the developing world and with each
other -          18 computers per 1,000 people
in the region, compared to the global average of
78.3 computers per 1,000 persons. -          1.6
percent of the Arab population has Internet
access, as compared with 68 percent in the UK and
79 percent in the US. a WIDE Arab Digital Divide
usually translates into an even WIDER Gender
Digital Divide. Why? Because of the 7
Challenges or 7Cs . These negatively affect
disadvantaged groups effective use of ICTs (with
marginalized Arab women often the most negatively
impacted).
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What are the 7Cs?

• 1. Cost High cost of access and connectivity at
  all levels (telephone line, local call, computer
  and internet equipment, subscription to ISP).
• 2. Capacity High computer and internet
  illiteracy (lack of basic skills), coupled with
  absence of localized training targeting
  disadvantaged women.
• 3. Content includes a variety of issues, such as
  
• Language (dominance of English on the web and
  weak presence of Arabic)
• Illiteracy (lack of innovative resources for
  illiterate women)
• Type and Quality of Information (information
  overload)
• Website usability (difficulty in navigating and
  accessing information on websites)
• 4. Creativity Dearth of innovative,locally
  tailored multi-media (audio-visual) tools or
  those that combine the more pervasive traditional
  (radio, video, tv, fax) and the less pervasive
  new technologies (mobiles, PDAs, internet, and
  e-mail).

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7cs continued..

• 5. CulturePatriarchy- Arab countries have
  the lowest Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM)
  (measured as political participation, personal
  incomes and entry into professions), next to
  Sub-Saharan Africa. - Dominance of Western and
  male- oriented cultures on the internet, which
  alienates Arab women.
• 6. Conflict situations of internal conflict or
  military occupation where the telecommunications
  infrastructure has been destroyed, weakened or
  made inaccessible make it difficult for women to
  access public ICT services at a time when they
  are confined to their homes (due to lack of
  safety and fear of violence) and in need of a
  wide support base available in cyberspace and to
  connect with their refugee and diasporic on-line
  communities.
• 7. Censorship social or political censorship in
  some Arab countries prevents women from freely
  accessing and contributing to internet content.

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7Cs Pose Difficult Questions

• Given these challenges, we need to ask
• 1. Are we creating a technical Access push/supply
  than pull/demand ?2. Are we bridging the
  digital gap or creating a digital "wadi"
  (canyon)?3. Are we diverting vital resources
  from basic services (e.g. health and education),
  while not effectively equipping poor women and
  men with the needed tools to benefit from ICTs?
  4. Are we helping to create a class of
  techno-elite educated, urban, wealthy Arab women
  or men with market purchasing power, adding yet
  another layer of marginalization? 5. Given the
  rapid diffusion of and change in ICTs, will
  disadvantaged Arab women and men ever be able to
  overcome these challenges and join the
  networked world?

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From Access to Effective Use

• Reply to first 4 questions depends on the answer
  to the 5th, which is
• YES we can overcome these challenges.
• How?
• By shifting focus from providing -technical
  Access to infrastructure/hardware (e.g.
  telecenters) to ensuring Effective Use of ICTs.

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What is Wrong with Access?
Nothing! Access is important, But, before
providing technical access, we should ask 1)
What are we providing access for? 2) For whom
are we providing access? 3) To what are we
providing access. Also, at present access may
only benefit the private corporate sector. Those
who are not direct beneficiaries of the corporate
sector, such as disadvantaged Arab women, risk
falling further behind as a result of this uneven
focus. And, Technical Access may be
unsustainable in the long run due to the
exponential growth in wireless technology and its
convergence with mobiles and other handheld
devices.
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What is the Alternative? Effective Use

• An approach drawn from community informatics
  theory (the study of enabling communities with
  ICTs)
• Effective Use of ICTs is the capacity and
  opportunity to successfully integrate ICTs into
  the accomplishment of self or collaboratively
  identified goals. (M. Gurstein, 2003)
• Asks how? by whom? under what circumstances?
  and for what purposes can ICTs be effectively and
  actively used to benefit disadvantaged
  individuals and communities

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The Effective Use Rainbow has 7 layers

• 1.Carriage facilities What telecommunications
  service infrastructure is most appropriate?
• 2. Input/output devices Which devices do users
  need to undertake the particular activity?
• 3. Tools and supports What software, physical
  supports, protocols, and service supports are
  required?
• 4. Content services What specifically designed
  content is needed for the particular application
  areas? Effective use implies content which is
  designed to be specifically "effective" usable,
  trustworthy, and designed for particular types of
  end users in appropriate language formats. The
  issue here is to go beyond access to develop
  applications of interest and benefit and
  usability to identified end users.

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Effective Use continued

• 5. Service access/provision What type of social
  and organizational infrastructure, links to local
  social networks, and training facilities are
  necessary for the particular use being developed?
  
• 6. Social facilitation What local regional
  authorities/resources, community and
  environmental infrastructure are required to
  locally enable the desired application or use?
• 7. Governance (administration) What is the
  required financing, regulatory or policy regime,
  either for governance of the application or to
  enable the implementation of the application
  within the broader national legal or regulatory
  systems? ("access" in all its various
  components is a pre-condition and an enabler of
  "effective use" but is not a substitute for
  it.)Dont forget
• - Participatory action research methods are
  important at all stages.
• - Local facilitators/intermediaries (e.g. NGOs,
  youth, community leaders) that act as links
  between disadvantaged women and ICTs need to be
  involved.

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Are ICTs Worth all this Effort?YES!

• With effective use ICTs can
• - Allow the unheard voices (and images) of
  marginalized women and men to reach
  decision-makers and politicians, improving their
  bargaining power and increasing their influence
  on decisions that affect their lives.
• - Enable these women and men to take advantages
  of the life-improving opportunities offered by
  e-commerce.
• Allow them better access to basic services such
  as telemedicine, on-line and distance education,
  e-governance and e-commerce.

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Effective Use Case Studies

• Kothmale Internet Community Radio Project
  (telecentre)-Sri Lanka
• http//www.unesco.org/webworld/highlights/internet
  _radio_130599.html
• Uses community radio as an interface between the
  Internet and rural communities.
• Offers a daily two-hour radio program to "radio
  browse" the internet following specific queries
  from listeners, community broadcasters find,
  organize, translate (into local language) and
  present information from selected Internet sites
  via radio.
• Acts as a mini Internet Service Provider to the
  community through offering free Internet access.

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Jiva's Teledoc project Quality Healthcare via
Low-cost Mobile technology- Rural India

• http//www.jiva.org/
• TeleDoc application is designed to transmit data
  from mobile phone, and computers to a central
  database.
• It has three components
• Field representatives conduct medical
  examinations using forms on mobile telephones.
• Information from each examination is forwarded to
  doctors in a central clinic, who use the data to
  diagnose patients and prescribe medicines.
• Field representative retrieves patient
  information and brings back medicine.
• Patient information is also stored in a central
  database for future reference and as a method of
  collecting demographic information. A central
  database.
• Currently implemented in 15 villages in Haryana,
  India with very low literacy levels where health
  services are limited.

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Ideas for Earning Money for Illiterate Rural
Women- Uganda (CD Rom)

• http//www.wougnet.org/News/cdupdate.html
• Housed in the Nakaseke community center in
  Uganda, Project targets first time computer
  users.
• CD Rom designed to use a simple browser
  navigating system with graphic interface and
  spoken text.
• Content for the new CD-ROM drawn and adapted
  from two resources offering "best practices" of
  successful entrepreneurial women in Uganda and
  marketing strategies.
• Currently available in English and Luganda.

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Virtual Souk Website - (Several Arab Countries)

• http//www.southbazar.com/english/mainbazaar.htm
• Through this website 775 artisans in Morocco,
  Tunisia and Lebanon can sell their products
  directly to tourists and international customers
  (with the help of NGOs)
• Project gets rid of the middleman delivering
  65-80 of money earned to the artisans
  themselves.
• Around 75 to 80 of the artisans partners of the
  Virtual Souk are women.
• Project has been called a lifeline by some of
  the Moroccon women involved.
• Similar projects are being set-up in Jordan and
  other Arab countries.

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Sources

• Main source Effective Use A Community
  Informatics Strategy beyond the Digital Divide
  by Michael Gurstein, First Monday, 2003. The
  Effective Use Rainbow is adapted from the Access
  Rainbow Source Clement and Shade, cited by M.
  Gurstein
• A Review of ICT Initiatives that Focus on
  Disadvantaged Women in South Asia, draft by
  Anita Gurumurthy, UNFEM, 2003
• Information Society in Western Asia , ESCWA,
  2003
• Digital Divide in Arab World 'Staggering by
  Greg LaMotte, VOA, Cairo, 2002
• AHDRs, UNDP, 2002 and 2003
• Overview of Internet in Arab States, Abdulilah
  Dewachi, 2001, ESCWA.- The Business Outlook
  for Arab Women AME Info, 2003
  http//www.ameinfo.com/news/Detailed/29074.html