Bridging the Digital Divide -- GENDER

Welcome to day three of TechSoup's discussion about the Digital Divide! Today's focus is women and girls and the Digital Divide, but you can certainly feel free to post to any of the folders regarding other aspects of the Digital Divide here on TechSoup. Discussions may continue long after the official "day" ends.

I encourage everyone to be generous with each other regarding trying to understand different points of view on this and other topics. There is not one of us who can speak on this topic with complete and utter authority -- you all have something to say, and I hope you feel comfortable saying it here, even if someone -- or even everyone -- doesn't agree with it.

My co-host for this discussion is Latifat Kadir, who lives in Lagos, Nigeria. She will post more information about herself here momentarily. I am in Bonn, Germany, and that means both Latifat and I are on very different time zones than the rest of you -- for those of you in North America, we probably won't be around for your afternoon discussions.

TOPIC INTRO

There are barriers that keep women and girls in particular away from computer and Internet-related classes and community technology centers. These barriers are even more pronounced in developing countries, but certainly still exist in the U.S.

What are the barriers? I'm going to speak generally, and with the knowledge that these are present in varying degrees, and that these are in no particular order of importance:

-- lack of childcare

-- reluctance by other women and girls, family members, tech-related class organizers and tech center staff to support women and girls in participating in tech classes or in using tech ("Why do YOU need computer training?")

-- class and tech center structures where "squeaky wheels get the grease", meaning that unless you know how to be very verbal and demonstrative about needs and opinions, you won't be attended to or supported much

-- cultural barriers, as in a woman may feel uncomfortable being the only one, or one of just a few women, in a computer class

For women in developing countries, there is also a lack of education/literacy that affects this issue more than women in "The North," as well as a profound lack of TIME. Women in these countries are engaged in childcare, income generating activities and managing the home -- unless they give up sleep, when would they be able to use a community tech center?

What are other barriers that keep women and girls away from computer and Internet-related classes and community technology centers? Or do you think there is no such digital divide and, if so, why?

SOME OF MY THOUGHTS

Actually, I've shared a lot of my thoughts already on this subject in the "Gender and the Digital Divide" folder already here on Tech Soup. But here they are in one fell swoop:

I have observed and experienced the reluctance of many woman -- not all women -- to attend workshops that have something to do with computers and the Internet, to ask questions if they do attend, and to experiment with these tools. Other trainers I have talked to, with rare exceptions, experience the same thing. When I have worked with women regarding computers and the Internet, the phrases I hear often (but never from men) are:
-- I am really stupid about computers/I cannot use computers well
-- I have a stupid question
-- I'm not a techie and I don't really understand the Internet
-- I don't think I can learn this.
-- I don't understand how a computer/the Internet are really going to make that much of a difference in my job/my life; it just seems like more work to me

There does seem to be insecurity issues for some women regarding technology that don't seem to be there for men, generally speaking. The "I'm stupid" comments break my heart -- how did so many women get the idea that they are stupid? As a result, when I do workshops, I always say early on that I believe non-techies and those who are great at working with people are the ones who do the most exciting, the most interesting things with technology, and there are absolutely no stupid questions. I also make sure everyone understands that I am not a techie either -- I don't know how my car works, but I sure take it to some really exciting, wonderful places.

And, yet, ultimately, from what I've experienced and what I've heard from others, women perform as well or even better with computers and the Internet once they have the confidence that they can do it. For me, the older the woman or the lower-the economic level of the woman, the more insecure she seems to be about her abilities to learn about computers and the Internet -- or anything "new", for that matter. And, yet, once we find that comfort zone, off they go, as well as anyone else and, often, even better.

OTHER QUESTIONS TO EXPLORE:

What does the gender-related digital divide look like to you?
How have you seen it or experienced it yourself?
What steps do individuals, nonprofit organizations/NGOs, instructors, and even governments need to take to address this gender digital divide?
Does the corporate world have a role to play?

And, finally, some resources:

ICT & Gender News and Resources
From the Development Gateway

Women's Net Organization
Offers an abundance of information and resources that are relevant for those interested in a wide variety of Gender and ICT issues.

Gender Information Technology, and Developing Countries: An Analytic Study
A paper about the information technology divide among women in developing countries. It opens up to the readers the current situation of gender information technology in developing countries, the issues concerning women's access to them and the possibility of women's political and economic empowerment through IT.

Be sure to view the the "Gender and the Digital Divide" folder already here on Tech Soup for more thoughts on this subject.

-- Jayne
http://www.coyotecommunications.com/aboutme.html

Hi, my name is Latifat Kadir. I live in Lagos, Nigeria. I'll be co-hosting with Jayne Cravens on this topic. I've been an online volunteer with the United Nations Information Technology Service(UNITeS) since April 2002. I have also volunteered offline with Hope Worldwide, here in Lagos, Nigeria. I attended the University of Lagos, Nigeria and The Nigerian Law School.

The topic we'll be discussing today is one that concerns everyone in the world because in today's world, we've all become digital in a sort of way that we can't escape.

The digital divide for women refers to that gap that
exists numerically in the use and existence of
information about information and computer technology
between men and women. I have further observed this
divide in the participation of the women folk in ICT
programs held and on a daily basis, the number of
women that use our commercially-run cyber cafes
compared to the men.

I think all people should care about this divide if we are truly serious about raising women to be on the
same pedestal as men as we all advocate. Most especially in the present world of advanced computer
technology. Essentially the only thing that I see
could amount to a barrier to equal access to computers and the internet by the women folk is a lack of the facilities/centres for this purpose, strictly provided for the women folk. This would further arouse their curiosity and act as a huge encouragement to the women.

What do you think?

I'm in a cyber cafe right now. On the average, we have about 7:2 ratio, male to female. One thing I've however discovered over time is that as with many other things, the girls(few as they may be) that have been involved in computer technology have usually been good at it once you put them through. One usually has school girls coming in and doing the thing themselves in group and in that way teaching and learning more from one another. No one may be a better example on how imaginary the whole fear females may have about computers and information technology than myself. When i decided to learn how to use the computer (because really a couple of years back, 5 - 6 years), you'd actually get much fewer people knowing their way about the computer, i found it so difficult, it did quite seem like greek, especially when I had to learn programming. But the moment I learnt, I hit it off; teaching myself so much about the computer and still learing more each day. It all seemed like so much hard work initially except I had the will to go on and there hasn't been any turning back since then. A lot of times, up until now, my female friends come around each time they have to do something on the net or anything more than typing some words on the keyboard. What I usually do is put them through more than they actually needed at the moment and they have continually seen that there's not much to it anyway. I tell every single girlfriend of mine, there's no way she's going to move forward if she doesn't get computer literate and that always pushes them forth. I encourage, give lessons when I can; make them understand its whole relevance to whatever it is they are involved in. That way, they know it has become a necessity, insecurity or no insecurity.

Disclaimer: I do not intend to trivialize this thread, or the topic itself by my post. Please know that I am sharing in sincerity -- it just so happens that my reply involves cartoon strips.

-- I'm not a techie and I don't really understand the Internet

There is a "techie" cartoon strip that I read daily, titled "User Friendly" -- it's about the adventures of a small local ISP. Most of the characters are techies of one sort or another (programmer, web designer, tech support, network engineer) -- the author of the strip very thoughtfully has made one of the main characters and one of the minor characters (a contractor) female. These characters can most certainly hold their own in a computer/Internet setting, and often end up showing up the male characters whose egos sometimes get in the way of their logic.

Another comic strip I read daily is titled "Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet". This strip's main character is a female sysadmin/programmer, who struggles to be a technology worker in a male-dominated industry.

I am impressed with both of the authors of these strips, since it would be easy enough to write strips that are entirely focused on the male readership (these are very "niche" strips, and aren't likely to show up in the newspaper anytime soon). I believe that this is great social commentary for the technology field, even in what might seem like something that is fairly trivial. Both strips portray their female characters in a very positive light, and with "can do" attitudes towards technology.

Links:
User Friendly - http://www.userfriendly.org/
Helen - http://www.comicspage.com/helen/

I've several points to make. The first is something from my own experience. I have felt nervous and uncomfortable using 'cyber cafes' due to the fact that I can see men viewing pornography sites. I'm sure I can't be alone in finding this completely unacceptable and it doesn't make me want to return to these cafes, where I feel vulnerable.

Onto other issues - I think there is clearly a divide but there is also a divide between rich and poor countries, women's literacy levels in these countries (particularly for women from minority and indigenous communities, who tend to have lower literacy rates than women from majority communities), the time that women have to undertake new learning/new tasks (a point that I think was already mentioned), and the number of computers/phone lines etc that are available in different regions of the world. Wherever these resources are scarce then women's access to them will be even more scarce.

Hope these views are useful. Regards. Kat

"Both strips portray their female characters in a very positive light, and with "can do" attitudes towards technology."

These are terrific! Thanks so much for sharing this info about these comics! I think these would be terrific resources for computer trainings, actually.

"I have felt nervous and uncomfortable using 'cyber cafes' due to the fact that I can see men viewing pornography sites."

You know, I almost brought this up in my original post, but didn't. I'm glad you did. Yes, I know what you mean -- the same thing happened to me in a telecenter in Egypt. It made me feel very uncomfortable as well -- I didn't want to see it, but unless I had put blinders on, there was no way not to. And I also wondered, hmm, I wonder what these people are thinking about myself and the only other woman in this place... I'm not sure what the "solution" is though, as I don't like web filtering... anyone with any ideas?

I absolutely agree with you Katrina, about the divide between rich and poor countries which also arises the issue of the literacy level of women in poor countries. But as to "feeling uncomfortable" in cyber cafes, that has so far not yet been a problem in developing countries(in one of which I live). This may be because the cyber cafes are yet small around here or have their computers in private cubicles. Some of these public centres have also made it a duty to log off anyone viewing pornographic sites in their cafe or doing some other fraudulent stuff. But it may not necessarily have come in the way of girls trying to learn or teach themselves in such places.

Right now, obtaining access to the internet in developing countries has definitely proved cheaper using the public means(usually via VSAT) than a private connection via a phone line which is quite often seen as expensive so people won't necessarily be talking right now about obtaining more phone lines so they could get connected and women staying at home could have better chances of getting computer literate. Except tarrifs come lower, it may not be an option. But I definitely see the point you're trying to make.

Some data from previous discussions on TechSoup regarding gender and the Digital Divide:

An very brief article by the BBC says "It could take another seven years before men and women are using the net in equal numbers." The article includes links to related stories.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3019710.stm

Ellen Spertus' paper "Why Are There So Few Women Computer Scientists?"
www.mills.edu/ACAD_INFO/MCS/SPERTUS/Gender/why.html
The person who originally posted it said "It's an excellent piece about why women in academia specifically often havent pursued science careers that I think can be applied to some of the wider issues of women in computing in general."

Jayne, I think in developing countries, the role the corporate world has got in developing countries is sponsoring the setting up of community technology centres exclusive to women. This they should consider as their own contribution towards the development of the society, taking into consideration that educational wise, women lag behind.

I'm from Venezuela, and I really would speak in Spanish... this serves to me to appoint our first divide: the language, the first language in internet is english; as latinamerican the poverty and the difficult to connect most of people to phone and internet are the second divide; later we could speak about the problems in education, and so on. Despite this, the most of leaders of NGO's working with ITC for development are women, and according to the last sounding from CAVEDATOS, in Venezuela de 49% of the internet users are women and girls,principally, that use it for sending mails and search for studies opportunities. Is a great notice, don't u think? But this porcentage only is about one million of women (our country has 22 million/persons). Nevertheless, the big problem is the role as leader and specialist, cause women aren't informatic engineers nor technician, i believe that infocenters or telecenters must have more women in this tasks. Other problem, obviously are the contents, violence -porno- and stereotypes are everywhere... The access to sciences disciplines is equitable in our universities, but we can see this in the schools, offices or cybercafes, by resultant, the girls haven't positive models in this sense.

The cartoons are good. 'sure would do a lot of good in community technology centres.

Hello All-
I am really glad this conversation has started!

I run a small CTC in East San Jose, CA. Now many people believe CA to be a technologically advanced place, but I can definately tell you that the digital divide is alive and well here in East San Jose.

However, here in our center the majority of the people taking the computer classes (80%) are women, and durring open lab hours we do have a large number of young boys coming in, so we've instituted Girls Weds, where boys are not allowed, to try and make it more accessable/comfortalble for younger girls to come in.

I think we have been successful in getting more women into our classes, because we have really taken a look at the barriers to participation in technology classes (or other activities as well). Our courses are designed for some one who may not have had much education (if any at all), we always offer child care here on site free for people taking the classes, and we try and offer classes at times during the day that work for the women in the area. I think it doesn't hurt that the staff are women (me and the other instructor), but that wasn't intentional, actually.

That being said, we do have filting software in place so that no one can (hopefully) access the porn sites. If someone is found accessing them (purposfully), they are removed from the lab and asked to not return. We have a lot of little kids using the lab, and I don't want them to stumble innocently on whitehouse.com (porn site) when looking to find information about our government.

So, I hope we are doing the right things to help relieve the gender divide in technology, however, that is at the expense of the men in the community. As was mentioned, many men do not feel comfortable if they are the only man in a class of 10 women. And I think the ecomonic and social factors that make the digital divide so obvious here in CA effect not only women, but also men in my community.

Jayne wrote:
[font face='Verdana' size='1']When I have worked with women regarding computers and the Internet, the phrases I hear often (but never from men) are:
-- I am really stupid about computers/I cannot use computers well
-- I have a stupid question
-- I'm not a techie and I don't really understand the Internet
-- I don't think I can learn this.
-- I don't understand how a computer/the Internet are really going to make that much of a difference in my job/my life; it just seems like more work to me [/font]

In the UK and US I've trained around 400 men from blue-collar backgrounds, mainly warehouse workers, to use computers in their jobs. These are exactly the sort of comments that they make when I work with them one on one. The people who are least literate and numerate are the ones who show the most concern.

Men who are reluctant to speak out in a group, or who think they will come across as stupid can be just as invisible as women who feel the same way. I'm not saying this isn't a larger issue for women than for men, just that it's not neceassrily as clear cut as straight gender lines might make it seem.

I find there is a huge difference between encouraging women to use computers and encouraging them to understand and be involved in the technical aspects. Although Internet use by women is still lower than men the gap is at least closing, and it's nothing like the gap between men and women studying computer science which, frighteningly, has been increasing.

Helen

Excellent point, Helen -

I live in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood in East Austin, Texas. it's a poor neighborhood and many of the neighbor kids will stop by to browse the Internet, play games and even, once in a while, research and do homework (grin).

One of the neighbor girls is very adept at the technical aspects of the machines. She is on the spot if there is any problem - and she often solves them! A local fix-it company is called Computer Moms, and when they sent a woman over to help with a networking problem, Monica followed her around with stars in her eyes.

But the other kids tease her about being interested in this and make fun of the fact that she is good with the technology. And her mother only wants her to do laundry, cook meals for her father and brothers, and find a husband. Mom is strongly opposed to Monica's interest. I have seen a lot of kids in this part of town pull away from things that they are good at because of peer pressure - I am not sure how to support her talent in the face of such opposition. Any success stories about girl's technology camps or such?

Sharron

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to have an input into the curent topic on Digital Divide.

It's wonderful to be in this world of high tech, to be able to rceive and send messages around the world in a "click" to be involved, Yet so many of our country's women are not participating, the opportunity is there, the equipment two steps away, but something is missing,

I tried to find out by doing a little servey, here's what I found out

Many women have a computer in the home
Some are afraid to use it
Some say it's for the children
After getting home on evenings I don't want to see a computer;
Me! and that thing; never
That is for young people
Some use it to play games, nothing else
Some have it because it was given by the big son abroad, to keep in touch on the net, so we put it on, once or twice a month to see if there is any mail from him, answer and switch it off
That thing cost to much money, I cannot afford another phone in the house, both of us working and we could sneek a chance in the office:

Just some of the responses!

Some of the people questioned are professionals!

My question therefore is where is the divide, somewhere in our mind?

Trinidad and Tobago