Study through the gender lens exposes inequities {writer: Piet Coetzer}

While access to information and communication technology (ICT) is increasingly impacting positively on the lives of women on the African continent, they still suffer from limitations due to, among others, discrimination.

This is, in the main, the finding of a recently published research paper by Research ICT Africa (RIA) under the title, “Gender Assessment of ICT Access and Usage in Africa”.

The RIA network was launched with seed funding from the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and seeks to extend its activities through national, regional and continental partnerships. The establishment of the RIA network emanates from the growing demand for data and analysis necessary for the appropriate and visionary policy required to catapult the continent into the information age.

In the introduction to the research paper, it is stated that a project which has specifically targeted women, such as the now renowned Grameen Telephone Scheme in Bangladesh, has demonstrated how ICTs can be deployed to improve their lives.

Impact of ICTs

The report on the research states that ICTs are widely seen as having the potential to contribute positively to economic growth and development, and to improve the livelihoods and quality of life of individuals and households. Several studies have sought to demonstrate the correlations between economic growth and the penetration of telephones – and now the Internet.

Although this is acknowledged to be something that begins in the high end of the market, the speed with which new, rapidly deployable wireless technologies have diffused across even developing countries has been their most distinguishing characteristic.

It is clear from the RIA Household and Individual Access and Usage Survey that the diffusion of ICT is highly uneven, concentrating on urban areas and leaving some rural areas almost untouched. Access to these technologies is constrained by income, as is usage; and as they become more complex, they are increasingly constrained by literacy and education, the report states.

The survey reveals some surprising instances where more women than men own mobile phones, such as in South Africa and Mozambique, or where women have greater knowledge of the Internet such as in Cameroon. More generally, however, the study confirms the differences in access by men and women to ICTs, particularly where they depend on public access.

With regard to mobile access, if factors other than gender are held constant, no significant gender effect for mobile phone ownership can be found. This means that women with similar income, education and employment status are as likely as men to own a mobile phone.

But, as women generally have less access to employment, education and other factors that increase the likelihood of ownership, access to mobile phones is clearly not equal between men and women.

The survey further found that although men spend more on mobile phones in absolute terms, women spend a greater share of their monthly income on mobile usage.

Impact of radio

The radio is the most commonly used electronic communication device, but even access to it is influenced by financial considerations due to absence of power in rural areas and the high cost of batteries.

For some, however, it is particularly the absence of power and income that plays a significant role.

There are significant differences across countries around radio access by men and women and differences in their favourite programmes.

Although women may be at home more, they tend to listen to the radio less than men, even though they may have a similar education and income. This is often due to the nature of their work or the lack of access to a radio, or not being able to select which programmes to listen to if male members of the household are present.

Conclusions

The limited access to the full range of ICTs by women in Africa and their constrained usage, mostly due to the high costs of services or equipment, highlights the sub-optimal use of ICTs on the continent. It is evident that access to and usage of ICTs with the potential to improve the well-being of individuals and the livelihoods of households, and with the associated developmental benefits, is highly uneven and relatively untapped, the research concluded.

Other conclusions are as follows:

• While radio is the most widely used medium, and mobile phone usage is extensive across all countries, only miniscule numbers (often statistically insignificant) of men and women own a computer and have an Internet connection at home. Only relatively small numbers are able to access the Internet at public access points, and large numbers remain unaware of it entirely. In a few exceptional cases, women are more aware of the Internet, such as in Cameroon, and have nearly equal access to Internet and mobile communications.

• This descriptive, gender-disaggregated overview indicates that women are not equally able to access and use ICTs. Important factors such as income, education and social position play a major role in explaining ICT access and usage.

• When men and women share similar backgrounds (data is controlled for factors such as education and income), the differences in access to ICTs and their usage are less. However, due to unequal access to the factors that appear to enhance ICT access and usage – such as income and education – women generally have less access to ICTs, and this increases as the technologies and services become more sophisticated and expensive, requiring greater levels of income and education to access and to operate.

• For these reasons, women in lower income groups or rural areas may have more in common with men in similar situations with regard to access and usage of ICTs than with women who are more educated or from higher income groups. While mobile phones are increasingly pervasive, their usage is limited by the high cost of communications. Even so, both men and women spend significant portions of their salaries on – mostly mobile – phone services. While men tend to spend more than women, the portion of women’s generally lower income spent on mobile phone usage is greater than that of men.

• Besides the high cost of PC ownership, the lack of computer skills is one of the main factors hindering men and women from using the Internet. Apart from slow connections, people are also deterred by the high cost of being online. In addition, the importance of setting up locally relevant sites and using local languages to increase the number of users cannot be overemphasised from the point of policy intervention.

• As a reflection of the gender disparity in educational attainment, women are less likely than men to have the necessary e-skills to use different technologies optimally. This is partly responsible for affecting their confidence in using these technologies. Efforts aimed at ensuring equal inclusion and involvement of women in the use of ICTs need to focus on primary government school training in basic computer literacy, but in addition, as other RIA e-literacy studies have shown, optimal use of PCs and the Internet requires high school and tertiary training. Further, to increase the participation of women as employees, managers and owners of ICT enterprises, programmes that target women and incentivise their training in traditionally male terrains of mathematics, science and engineering will be required on a significant scale across the continent; and

• The most intractable limitations to equitable access and use of ICTs, however, lie in the cultural and social dimensions of what are considered by many as normal social practices, but which discriminate against women and girls in key enablers of ICT access and usage such as education and employment. Specifically, however, various cultural barriers also limit the opportunities for women to access ICTs, including harassment in public spaces, work overload and gendered perceptions in relation to the use of certain ICTs. Hence, in addition to economic empowerment, it is important from a policy point of view to create a legal environment that ensures equal rights for women and men, which safeguards them from discriminatory practices and that fosters equitable participation in society and the economy more widely by both women and men.