[GKD] CFP: INSTRAW - Gender and ICTs
INSTRAW Call for Papers Gender and ICTs Background Information and communication technologies are recognized as key elements of the new global knowledge-based economy, ensuring rapid and continuous transfer of commercial, financial and political information crucial to the development process. However, it has been argued that women worldwide lag overwhelmingly behind men in the access to and use of ICTs. This newly developing gender gap is being argued to be a major source of gender inequality and one of the major obstacles to mainstreaming a gender perspective in development. In order to address the gender digital gap, the 1995 World Conference on Women (Beijing) delineated a strategy to promote greater access to communication by women internationally. Equally, the Beijing+5 Conference (2000, New York) called upon development cooperation to strengthen the capacity of women to use new technologies for advancing their position and for achieving gender equality and thus sustainable development. As a result, many initiatives have been undertaken by women and womenís organizations that aim at providing women with an access to ICTs as tools for social and economic empowerment. Furthermore, national and international agencies have also pursued many initiatives in order to ensure that women are not deprived of the benefits of the emerging information society. Many of these initiatives, however, have been undertaken in relative isolation from one another, and thus are not informed by shared learning experiences. Nor are these projects and initiatives necessarily integrated from the beginning into larger development policy frameworks. INSTRAW Collaborative Research Project on Gender and ICTs To address the need for sharing of knowledge and learning about gender aspects of ICTs, INSTRAW is initiating a collaborative research programme which aims: * To ascertain the state-of-the-art in terms of access and use, management and regulation, and impact of ICTs on women. * To determine the constituents of an enabling/disabling environment. * To gain a better understanding of how women and men are involved in ICTs, particularly in the developing countries; * To investigate what is presently being done by key stakeholders to promote and support projects aimed at the equal participation of women and men in ICTs in developing countries; * To propose ways in which ICTs can better serve as an important tool for empowerment and close the gender gap if and where such exists. In order to achieve this, INSTRAW is inviting the submission of Papers to be used as background information for the Virtual Workshops that will be held online through INSTRAWís Gender Awareness Information and Networking System (GAINS). The papers should address the following issues: 1) Gender dimension of access and use of ICTs through profiling of women and men using ICTs (age/income/region); how women and men- and in what ratio -access and use ICTs and for what purpose; what information is accessed; where it is used (private/public domain), etc.. 2) Gender dimensions of management and regulation of ICTs: how women and men participate in ICTs (as users/producers/managers/specialists-designers, technicians, analysts, etc); what are the existing ICT-related regulations and norms on the international and national levels as well as the existing regulatory instruments and tools and how do women participate; 3) Impact assessment on a sectoral basis: how ICTs impact on women and men: cultural (changes in cultural norms and stereotypes); social/political (empowers and enhances cooperation, negotiation, social action); and economic (new skills/employment). Why, if so, ICTs impact differently on women and men - education and training; socialization patterns; availability (cost, priorities, interest - women are poorer, have different priorities and interests). 4) Examination of country/regional/sub-regional variations in access to and use of ICTs; analysis of experiences; lessons learned and good national/regional practices. Authors should submit a 500 word abstracts to INSTRAW no later than 22 April 2002, together with a brief resume of their academic/professional background and experience. INSTRAW will select the most relevant abstracts by 1 May 2002 and commission the authors of the selected papers to prepare full versions of the papers. Authors will be paid a fee of US$ 1,000 per paper. The specific terms and conditions of this assignment will be discussed with the authors on an individual basis once the selection process has been finalized. Authors should submit their papers to INSTRAW by 1 June 2002 and are expected to present them at the Gender and ICTs Virtual Workshops which will be held during the 3rd quarter of 2002 through GAINS. It is important to note that the papers should be based on original research and should not be more than 7,000 words in length. Abstracts should be sent to
[GKD] RFI: Dev. Countries and Open Source Software
Dear GKD Members, My name is Dennis Heuer and I am a german social scientist who is involved in the free source community around the Linux operating system. My interest in social sciences and information technology always was interdisciplinary, so I begann to work on the question what Linux and the free source community could offer to developing countries. That is why I founded an organization to work on exclusively this problem. The organization is called organized communication and can be found on internet at the address: http://orgc.org. The organization is in its early stage and no project has been started. At the moment I am seeking for information to get a founded overall picture of the problem. Free source in developing countries is often discussed in the Linux community but seldom from the non-technical view. Too, the community does focus too much on stability, price, and office products. Software for schools, project and teamwork, or cultural differences to be considered etc. is mainly out of focus. This is why I contact you. Please, maybe you can help me on my way to find the right basement for my work. And maybe I can help you getting your opinions heard in the free source community because I will hold a speech on LinuxTag, the greatest Linux Fair in Europe, taking place in Germany at the beginning of June (see: http://www.linuxtag.org, english pages available). There are several objects that I would like to know about. They are too many to sum up here. I will have a look into the GKD-Archive but it may be very overloaded. Please help directly. In this email I just want to reduce my questions to three main points: - I do not focus on business. My aim is to support the work of non-governmental organizations and (gov.) local initiatives. I could not find many case studies being done on that topic. How is the need for software in team and project work inside of (international) organizations? How important is work and communication over internet for those organizations? What are the experiences with information technology in small local initiatives or in schools? Do you know resources that answer these questions? - Are you able to give a global picture where in the developing world the use of computers is a topic? This question is twofold. First, the use of computer equipment has a different relevance in different countries. Second, the size of organizations and initiatives or the social level, the gender may play a role. - Can you give me contact addresses of organizations, institutes or programmes that focus on similar problems? Thank you very much, Dennis Heuer ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] Digital Divide vs. Social Divide.
To Yacine: It is hard to disagree with your pithily expressed frustration, or sharp definition of the social schisms underlying the 'digital divide' (DD) however I would suggest there is some political utility in keeping these two words as a sort of quick shorthand.. if it can focus the attention of policymakers ... DD resonates at several levels, after all, one of the first references was in the US (then) Vice President Gore's introduction of a US Internet policy, and what could be called the 'Carthage' principle... where he said that if the information highway bypassed his birthplace, Carthage, Te (pop 2251), he was not interested in promoting it... and the big question was how to build on-ramps accessible from small rural areas admittedly this ignores critical development issues like literacy, language of access, utility of information, and modalities in zero-electricity regions. but I would not disregard the value of the DD label as a good shorthand for mobilizing political will and thus (hopefully) resources ... while surely we must not ignore underlying social factors which are truly important, the speed is so precipitous at which community Internet access technologies are moving, we can scarcely afford to wait...here follows a quick personal (admittedly 'northern') anecdote to illustrate.for years like many, I have used all kinds of devices/strategies to get at my email while travelling... and found it sometimes easier in Africa or India than in rural US or UK...but when an Internet cafe popped up in London Heathrow, with branches in some motorway rest areas out in the countryside..I joined happily, and received a little card (named E-Internet Exchange with a logo suspiciously close to UNESCO's!)..that was stamped each time, promising bonuses to frequent users... now, it seemed, my access problem was solved for pennies a visit EXCEPT I had not allowed for the vagaries of the 'free' market system (nor the awesomely steep technology curve)... two weeks ago I smugly steered my car into the Oxford (M40) motorway service center to have a coffee and pickup my email.. but lo and behold.. the shiny computer consoles were nowhere to be seen, no eager service person ushering me to my keyboard, just tables, trays and people eating I found the 'manager' who apologised and said there was just not enough business to justify continuing the cyber-investment.so I began to twitter through early stages of e-withdrawal ...on the way back through London, I found part of the reason for the demise of roadside E-Internet Exchange..near Victoria Station is a cavernous cybercasino-type facility (which did not honour my little card)... where there were at least four times as many consoles, and no expensive 7/24 service-person, just cash machines like a swiss busstop, where you put in your coins or banknote, and out comes a unique password... good for 60 minutes... you then wait your turn for one of the scores of folks to get up ... you leap in, sit down, enter your password at the prompt, and the Internet is yours interestingly, this is only a block from the new DFID HQ one wonders if that is pure chance? this is the first time I have encountered this kind of automated Internet cafe... but maybe others have seen it elsewhere? certainly it must be confined (like big hospitals, well-financed public schools) to wealthy, probably urban areas? again endorsing the metaphor of the 'digital divide'. Yacine Khelladi wrote: Just as we seek to close the Digital Divide between the North and South, We are sick and tired of the digital divide problem. The REAL problem is how are we going to use the Strategic opportunities offered by the ICTs to close the SOCIAL divide. And avoid digital divide initiatives that deepen the social divide. This is not a semantic problem, but a vision that encompasses all of our objectives, methods and actions, to use ICTs for sustainable human development. ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
