Putting ICTs in the Hands of Women

In collaboration with infoDev, a global grant programme managed by the World Bank and Microsoft, Datamation is working with the women of Kanpur and "chikan" embroidery workers of Lucknow to establish community multi-media (CMC) centres in several economically poor communities in the Lucknow/Kanpur area. Interpersonal communication is being used to impart training in information technology (IT) skills, handicraft and other vocational skills, and health knowledge. The initiative draws on hand-held computers, computer-aided design (CAD)-based embroidery technology, and multi-media CDs over the cable network. Women's participation is emphasised; self help groups (SHGs) specific to vocations such as candle making have been set up, through which women have been trained in "chikancad" software developed by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Damatation facilitates market linkages between the producers and the buyers - in the form of buyer-producer meets, exhibitions, sampling, cataloging, ICT-enabled internet marketing, fulfillment and quality control.

Marketing goods through skills-based ICT use - to foster economic participation - is only one component of the project; the Kanpur and Lucknow women are also using ICTs to develop a "voice" to meet their information and communication needs, and to express their creativity and independence. For example, the women have been searching English newspaper websites, which is a reflection of what organisers call "a keen desire amongst the women to learn English....[Furthermore,] the women have been expressing themselves in Hindi and Urdu by writing in Roman letters." They have been using their newfound technology skills to access educational content online, such as through distance learning websites. The women also use ICTs to find information about steps they can take to prevent and cope with various diseases, and how they could take action in the event of epidemics such as dengue fever or viral fever.

This project also draws on video, particularly to reach out to elderly women who might otherwise have trouble accessing the Centre itself. Datamation facilitated telecast of the vocational and skills enhancement modules over the cable network, which features a combination of video and community's own recording - enabling "the community to learn the process of holding [the] camera efficiently for recording purposes apart from observing the process of editing and mixing of the audio cum video; therefore the women have started feeling motivated enough to produce their own multimedia modules."

The above-described strategies are also echoed in Datamation's work in the predominantly minority neighbourhood of Seelampur-Zaffarabad in North East Delhi. Datamation is collaborating with the South-Asian UNESCO ICT for Poverty Reduction (ictPR) initiative and the Babul-Uloom-Madrasa, an orthodox Muslim religious school to train Muslim women in ICT use. Specifically, a modern ICT centre was set up to provide a venue for Muslim women to learn from interactive multimedia packages on vocational skills, small businesses, and human and legal rights. Skills and vocational modules offered on CD-ROMs focused on topics ranging from tailoring, embroidery, candle making and liquid soap making to management of courier and tiffin centres, basic literacy, confidence-building and personality development. The Centre also established support mechanisms in the form of capacity-building, marketing and financial networking, and established a local community website called eNRICH (click here for a summary), where women can acquire basic computer training and record their concerns on health, education, livelihood, and other matters related to the community's needs.

Women, Economic Development, Technology, Health, Rights.

Reflecting on the Kanpur-Lucknow initiative, organisers stress that women's strategic interests in content creation should be the guiding principle. They elaborate: "On the technology side, an important direction for the future towards women's economic empowerment is the creation of content and applications that will serve women's interests....The two-fold agenda of advancing women's rights - comprising a basket of social, political and economic rights - and addressing women's economic interests and livelihood concerns is at the core of mobilizing ICTs for women's empowerment....It is important to construct the two as equally critical and explore ways to bundle one with the other. Building online spaces for women to utilize the power of the Internet to enable community building, sharing development experiences, advancing the rights agenda and advocating against exploitation and oppression is a priority."

Along these lines, Datamation holds that the goals of promoting women's access and enhancing women's gains from ICTs really depend on how gender relations are understood in context, and how this understanding is then integrated into specific strategies. To this end, participatory and gender-sensitive research is important to the organisation. As part of an effort to assess the relevance and effectiveness the CMC centres in the Kanpur-Lucknow initiative, 140 women in Kanpur and 61 women in Lucknow participated in a self-evaluation process. 70.71% Kanpur women and 70% Lucknow women had never used a computer before joining the CMC. Approximately 22% women of Kanpur reported some increase in their income after completing their vocational courses. Organisers describe "a wide change in the attitude of the women. They have developed self confidence and now they are more confident about their future..."

The Seelampur project was named one of two runners-up in the 2005 Gender and ICT Awards.