Gender and ICT/Gender Analysis in Development is a Conscious Choice

What are the Challenges in Integrating a Gender Perspective?
Taking on a gender perspective in any type of initiative is fraught with challenges, both conceptual and practical, individual and communal. Fully integrating gender analysis means putting on the gender lens, not selectively, but consistently. This requires viewing all social phenomena from a gender perspective, probing into hierarchical, unequal and unjust relationships between women and men. At the individual level, this requires a consciousness on the part of the wearer to continuously challenge socially accepted roles of women and men that result in harmful health practices or role subordination. This can raise potentially serious conflicts within the individual. The individual conflict that is a necessary by-product of becoming aware of gender inequalities extends to the community level as well. Gender analysis requires communities to probe into existing relationships among community members towards understanding the inequalities and injustices that exist between different groups within the community. Community organizers, by and large, hesitate to get into gender issues precisely because it is seen as having a divisive function that raises conflict within the community. It is, by far, easier to focus on unifying communities along traditional ways of conduct and roles, rather than to address existing gender inequalities and concerns. There are also practical challenges in incorporating a gender perspective. This means allocating time and resources in understanding basic gender issues as well as applying such concepts into the context of policies and initiatives. At the community level, this requires a series of gender sensitivity workshops to prepare communities and individuals to address gender issues and concerns. It may also require the services of gender specialists to provide necessary advice to development agencies and planners, as well as gathering resources relevant to different gender issues.

Developing inclusive development strategies with women requires a variety of approaches, or a combination of these, such as the women’s empowerment approach, the affirmative action approach, and the Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation (PM&E) approach. Consultation with women and participatory decision-making are not sufficient to ensure that gender issues are considered and addressed in the area of ICT. A high level of consciousness and understanding too is needed to discern the kinds of gender issues being raised. Do these further perpetuate the gendered division of labour? Do these just support women in fulfilling their obligatory gendered roles and responsibilities in the household and in the community? What is usually brought to the surface in such consultations are practical gender needs rather than strategic gender interests. With the development of trust and a consistent consultative process, as well as the provision of space for women to come together to discuss these issues, strategic gender interests can be brought out more clearly and addressed more effectively. Incorporating gender is an ongoing, never-ending process of conceptualizing, activities, and reconceptualizing. Once the conscious decision and commitment to take on a gender perspective is made, development planners and agencies must be prepared for the long haul. This is perhaps the reason why many development planners and agencies, governments and organizations have remained indifferent to, or at the very least selective in, incorporating gender in their policies and programmes. Gender analysis is not something mechanical that an individual or community can conduct properly based on just guidelines and frameworks (see Box 8) as it can demand that the individual and the community question their own beliefs, long-time practices and values.

Despite the probable difficulty in internalizing and operationalizing a gender perspective and analysis, however, it is imperative that efforts of integration continue in development. As APC WNSP states, “women compose one-half of the world’s population and perform two-thirds of the world’s work hours, yet are everywhere poorer in resources and poorly represented in positions of power. As these inequalities constitute a systemic condition in all parts of the globe, it is imperative to take gender seriously in thinking about or understanding economic development and globalization. Gender analysis should include an examination of economics at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels and across a range of institutional contexts (households, communities, markets and states) to illustrate women’s disadvantageous position in ICT, and the male bias in measuring ICT outputs which renders women’s work invisible.” There are real gender inequalities and injustices in the ICT sector, and ICTs can result in further perpetuating such inequalities and injustices. There is a need to address these gender issues in ICT, and in order to do so, incorporating a gender perspective in planning, monitoring and implementing ICTled projects is non-negotiable.

What is the Difference between Practical Gender Needs and Strategic Gender Interests?
The differentiation of practical and strategic gender needs is theoretically significant for gender analysis. This distinction is often important in gender planning, becoming the basis for identifying actions. For evaluation purposes, assessing the extent of responding to both practical gender needs and strategic gender interests can inform the impact of projects and initiatives. Practical gender needs are the needs women identify that do not challenge their socially accepted roles. These needs relate to fulfilling their productive, reproductive and community managing roles and responsibilities. They are practical needs that include basic living commodities such as shelter, employment and food. While practical gender needs are related to existing gender roles, strategic gender interests challenge those roles in favour of equity and equality for women. Strategic gender interests begin with the assumption that women are subordinate to men as a consequence of social and institutional discrimination against women (see Box 9).

In practice, an approach that emphasizes practical needs may make room for recognition and consideration of strategic interests. On the other hand, satisfying practical needs reinforces the existing division of labour, which subordinates women. Having access to the Internet, for example, does not automatically change the relative position of women to men. An approach that emphasizes strategic interests, often taken up by activists, challenges existing social systems and structures in favour of equality for women. Project interventions may target gender disparities in one of two ways. They can address immediate short-term needs without necessarily challenging the structural causes of gender inequality, or they can address larger strategic issues relating to the gender interests of women and men to create conditions for gender equality. For example, a project designed to place computer terminals in rural public school classrooms addresses the immediate need of improving access to computers without necessarily addressing the strategic interests of improving disparities in female and male enrolment in primary and secondary schools. A framework that is useful in analysing gender and ICT is the newly emerging cultural analyses of technology. This framework understands both technology and gender not as fixed and given, but as cultural processes which (like other cultural processes) are subject to ‘negotiation, contestation, and, ultimately transformation’. This ‘technology as culture’ perspective goes further than the current viewpoint of women’s exclusion from full participation in technological work. In the cultural analyses of technology, technologies are ‘cultural products’, ‘objects’ or ‘processes’ which take on meaning when experienced in everyday life. Whereas technology has been defined as a predominantly male perspective, change comes through a total re-evaluation and appropriate remuneration of women’s skilled and technical tasks. Given this framework, transforming the gendered relations of technology is not merely focused on gaining access to knowledge as it is, but with creating knowledge itself. This means being involved in the level of definition, making meanings and creating technological culture.

Wearing the Gender Lens and Keeping Them On
As Sara Longwe puts it, “if we wear good spectacles, we shall be properly equipped to recognize the whole picture of the different types of gender problems and their levels of severity” (Longwe, 2002). Longwe identifies five levels of severity of gender problems. These are: (1) General Development Needs; (2) Women’s Special Needs; (3) Gender Concerns; (4) Gender Inequality; and (5) Gender Issues (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Levels of Severity of Gender Problems

However, Longwe stresses that having the right spectacles is not enough. An added lens for analysing a gender issue is required. Such a lens provides us the ability to examine a gender issue in terms of its underlying causes, hence enabling the fine-tuning of a policy, programme or project in tackling a gender issue at its root cause, rather than just addressing effects at the surface (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Underlying Causes of a Gender Issue

Innovative interventions underway in different countries offer a micro-level view of processes of change and prospects for transforming gender inequities into equitable opportunities and outcomes. These are referred to as gender transformative strategies (see Box 11).

Gender-aware interventions still remain an important source of learning for wider social policy, as they aim to challenge the cultural and social norms that underpin persistent denials of women’s rights to ICTs, and belie many of the assumptions upon which efficiency-oriented policies are based.