Title: From Access to Effective Use: A Suggested Model for Ensuring Disadvantaged Arab Womens Engagement wi
1From 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)
2Arab 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).
3What 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).
47cs 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.
57Cs 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?
6From 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.
7What 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.
8What 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
9The 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.
10Effective 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.
11Are 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.
12Effective 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.
13Jiva'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.
14Ideas 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.
15Virtual 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.
16Sources
- 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