Isis at WSIS onsite reports from Geneva—11 December
by Aileen Familara, Isis International-Manila
ARE WOMEN EMPOWERED BY ICT?---CSW HOLDS ROUNDTABLE AT WSIS
A roundtable discussion on Women$BCT(B Human Rights in the Information Society was
organised by the Committee of NGOs (CONGO) and the Commission on the Status of
Women on 8 Dec, 2003. The forum sought to clarify women$BCT(B rights issues,
interrogate the concept of empowerment, and share best practices around women$BCT(B
use of ICT as a side event in the ongoing World Summit on the Information
Society in Geneva.
One of the sessions in the Forum focused on ICTs for women$BCT(B empowerment, with
presentations from Roxana Dunnette, Senior Executive Advisor at Worldspace, a
private firm that manufactures satellites and provides telecommunications
services worldwide; and Susanna George, Executive Director of Isis
International-Manila, a feminist information and documentation centre
advocating for Southern feminist positions at the WSIS.
Dunnette discussed how her company had created a travelling van serving as a
mobile Internet access point and radio broadcasting facility that then traveled
throughout four African countries: Mali, Senegal, Ghana, and Mauritania. The
vans connected to the Internet via satellite uplink, thus providing fast access
to people whose villages were visited. At the same time, the mobile FM radio
facility allowed the communities to broadcast their own content and
programming. They also set up mobile and fixed telekiosks for screening video
content.
Dunnette cited the importance of involving women in the production, management
and content creation, and reported that the WorldSpace caravans were staffed by
women and also invited women from the communities to get on air and online.
While the WSIS and the parallel event ICT for Development Platform was replete
with many such celebratory stories, there was still space for deeper analysis
of the so-called $BEJ(Bnformation society.” George presented a critical view of the
dominant concepts around women and ICTs. She said that women$BCT(B empowerment in
terms of ICTs should be questioned within a feminist framework. Empowerment has
been on the agenda of feminists, but the way that empowerment has been taken up
by developmental organisations has been undermined by the efforts
to $BEN(Bainstream gender” which has actually merely served to maintain the status
quo.
George identified points emerging in the current discourse on gender, ICTs and
development: One, that feminist activism and gender advocacy have become
disparate frameworks. Gender advocacy now operates outside the feminist
movement, deriving impetus from the theoretical standpoint of academia and not
the direct experience of organising at the grassroots. The second point
questions how ICTs have been equated with empowerment, raising expectations for
development as if they had an immediate transformative capacity. The third
point was around the idea that the issue of gender and ICT all boils down to
access or the lack of it. This has become the $BEM(Bowest common denominator” among
development agencies, activists, telecommunications activists and NGO
activists. Thus, this multistakeholder approach adopted in the WSIS, was
inherently flawed for accepting a model of development for women that does not
address issues more relevant to women$BCT(B lives.
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