Culture Is a Bigger Barrier to Bangladeshi Girls Going Online than Lack of Money or Computers

This Association for Progressive Communications (APC) news article examines the use by D.Net, a non-profit organisation that focuses on technology for economic development, of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC)'s Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM). GEM is a guide to integrating a gender analysis into evaluations of initiatives that use information and communication technologies (ICTs) for social change.

As detailed here, D.Net developed a programme to teach underprivileged rural youth how to use computers as part of the Computer Literacy Programme (CLP). By June 2009, D.Net was operating 107 computer literacy centres in 39 districts across the country, and a total of 18,556 students had completed the CLP course. To improve the training, D.Net wanted to learn more about what types of information the students, their parents, and teachers need. Using the GEM, they found that cultural factors play a bigger role in whether or not a girl attended the training than lack of money or resources. Co-founder of D.Net and CLP lead Mahmud Hasan explains that girls are often denied the chance to participate in computer training because it is considered socially inappropriate - in part because the classes are held after school when it is dark out, but also due to entrenched community attitudes that encourage computer and internet use among boys over girls. In this country, 1 in every 2 males accesses information online, whereas only 3 in 100 Bangladeshi women do.

Reportedly, while D.Net staff realises that a rural ICT for development project cannot automatically address gender gaps related to access, GEM has enabled them to consciously plan for and ensure that women and girls are given equal and accessible opportunities throughout the project's life-cycle. For example, noting that increasing girls' access requires the support of the entire community and by applying the GEM "gender lens" (a gender analytical perspective) during planning, data collection, and analysis, D.Net was able to build opportunities for girls into the project through direct consultation with mothers, female teachers, and the girls themselves. Also, the GEM evaluation encouraged D.NET to reconsider their fund-raising policy, which asked sponsors to select the schools they wished to support. Instead, D.Net encouraged their sponsors to give D.Net the flexibility to choose the schools most in need. As a consequence, now D.Net equally favours boys' and girls' schools, and, of the almost 20,000 students who had completed their training in June 2009, 52% were girls. D.Net intends to expand the CLP project to 1,000 schools by the year 2011 and will place special emphasis on girls' schools.

Now convinced that to change social conditions in Bangladesh women's and girls' unequal status and opportunities need to be addressed, D.Net organised a national GEM training from February 13-14 2010 with 10 organisations, including development groups such as Action Aid Bangladesh.