| Uses
Aside
from upper-income enclaves, home access to a computer and
the Internet is uncommon in developing countries. Most women
who use IT do so at work, where, already, gender inequities
that are well established in other sectors of the labor force
are being replicated.
Most
women entering the world of IT use it as a tool of production
for routine office work, with far fewer women using it as
a tool of communication for the creation and exchange of information.
Few women are producers of IT, whether as Internet content
providers, programmers, or software designers. Moreover, women
in both developed and developing countries are conspicuously
absent from IT decision-making echelons.
Among
women using IT for higher-level communication and product
creation purposes, the most prevalent application is networking
for political advocacy, often by women's NGOs who adopted
IT early on for this purpose. Women in developing countries
also use networking to promote their business interests, an
area far less developed than that of political activism but
representing a possibility for further development.
E-mail is the application of choice among women's organizations
and individual women in developing countries, as time and
bandwidth constraints make Web use difficult.
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you know? |
| In
ministries of developing countries, out of 201 senior
government officials responsible for IT, only 11 are
women (5.5%). However, where women are in top positions,
they are significant. Women serve as the ministers of
communication or telecommunication in three countries
(Mali, South Africa, and Colombia) and deputy ministers
in six (Angola, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Ghana,
the Kyrgyz Republic, and Tanzania). It is notable that
there are more women in senior government IT positions
in Africa than in any other region.
Compiled
from lists of senior government officials using the
ITU
Global Directory, Geneva, 2001 |
|