Gender and Trade - Do women get marginalized with increased usage of ICTs ? - Do women get marginalized with increased usage of ICTs ? - Do women get marginalized with increased usage of ICTs ?

Author	Message
Sona Mitra Sep 14 2007 11:26AM	New information and communication technologies are regarded as powerful tools for increasing the competitiveness of countries and contributing towards economic growth and development. Although a large part of rural women have remained excluded from the access to information and communication technology (ICT) and internet access etc. due to lack of adequate knowledge and skills, yet a significant proportion of women around the world have been benefited in terms of employment gains through ICTs. The ICT-induced changes in the labour market have affected women's employment, in particular in developing countries. Partly triggered by the expansion of global business process outsourcing, employment for women in ICT-related services has grown enormously over the past few years. Today, women take up significant shares of the workforce in the ICT-enabled industry in developing countries, notably in Asia, but increasingly so in Africa, Central and Latin America. However, patterns of gender segregation are being reproduced in the information economy where men hold the majority of high-skilled, high value-added jobs, whereas women are concentrated in the low-skilled, lower value-added jobs. Work in call centers perpetuates the devaluation of women’s labour, and even organisations in the information technology sector, as elsewhere, reward behaviour that is considered masculine. With the experience of the past few years, it has been rightly observed that it is more difficult for women to move into the higher-skilled, better-paid jobs of the ICT-related service sector, such as software development and programming or geographical information systems (GIS) analysis. Addressing the underlying barriers to these needs to be high on the policy agenda for creating an all-inclusive information society and economy. It is also important to mainstream gender into the ICT policies and strategies adopted by the countries to further address these issues. It would, however, be interesting to note the policy experiences of individual countries in this direction as also to get an idea of the persisting situation among the women workers in this sector. The discussion forum invites all to participate and contribute effectively for the purpose in this round of discussions.

Author

Message

Sona Mitra
Sep 14 2007 11:26AM

New information and communication technologies are regarded as powerful tools for increasing the competitiveness of countries and contributing towards economic growth and development. Although a large part of rural women have remained excluded from the access to information and communication technology (ICT) and internet access etc. due to lack of adequate knowledge and skills, yet a significant proportion of women around the world have been benefited in terms of employment gains through ICTs.

The ICT-induced changes in the labour market have affected women's employment, in particular in developing countries. Partly triggered by the expansion of global business process outsourcing, employment for women in ICT-related services has grown enormously over the past few years. Today, women take up significant shares of the workforce in the ICT-enabled industry in developing countries, notably in Asia, but increasingly so in Africa, Central and Latin America.

However, patterns of gender segregation are being reproduced in the information economy where men hold the majority of high-skilled, high value-added jobs, whereas women are concentrated in the low-skilled, lower value-added jobs. Work in call centers perpetuates the devaluation of women’s labour, and even organisations in the information technology sector, as elsewhere, reward behaviour that is considered masculine.

With the experience of the past few years, it has been rightly observed that it is more difficult for women to move into the higher-skilled, better-paid jobs of the ICT-related service sector, such as software development and programming or geographical information systems (GIS) analysis. Addressing the underlying barriers to these needs to be high on the policy agenda for creating an all-inclusive information society and economy. It is also important to mainstream gender into the ICT policies and strategies adopted by the countries to further address these issues.

It would, however, be interesting to note the policy experiences of individual countries in this direction as also to get an idea of the persisting situation among the women workers in this sector. The discussion forum invites all to participate and contribute effectively for the purpose in this round of discussions.