Digital Divide : Cultural Factors

Information and communications technology/ technologies (ICT) is basically a big term that includes any communication device or application such as radio, television, cellular phones, computer and network hardware and software, satellite systems and so on, and also as well as the applications and various services, such as videoconferencing or instant messaging apps like “Skype” or “WeChat” or even to E-banking service. All in all, ICTs can be apply in many particular field such as in education, health care or in libraries and much more.

 Information and communications technology has brought about revolutionary changes in the way people work, communicate, learn, spend time and also interact. As the emergence of the internet and mobile technology in the 1990s, together with the accelerated pace of globalization, has fueled the dramatic spread of applications of ICT across sectors and nations (Jorgenson & Vu, 2016). It has cause the ICT to grow extreme fast over the year 1990 to 2014.

                         

Fig 1:World internet users and mobile phone subscribers, 1990–2014. Data source: World Bank Development Indicators; see: http://wdi.worldbank.org/tables

But however the increasing technology advances will only make worse the already-existing economic gap between technological “have” and “have not” areas and especially in gender sector. According to Hashim (2008), despite significant growth in ICT professionals during the last two decades, there still remains a gender imbalance in the society.

Gender inequality refers to unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals based on their gender and it has always being a huge problem. It can occur in any form for example like in workplace, at home or even in media, and which this has cause an direct impact toward using ICT. Historically, men are advantaged over women in terms of accessing information and communication technologies in the male-dominated society (Shirazi, 2012 and Venkatesh, 2000). This gap between men and women with regards to accessing ICTs is known as the gender digital divide.

There are many factor which can cause this gender digital divide problem to happen and one of the main factor is because of the culture of the society. One example of the male-dominated country is India, according to George (2016), despite that now is 21st century, India rejoice in celebrations when a boy is born, and if it is a girl, a muted or no celebrations is the norm and according to the article the root cause of gender inequality in Indian society lies in its patriarchy system. patriarchy is a system of social structure and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women (Walby,1990). Women’s exploitation is an age old cultural phenomenon of Indian society.

According to Potnis (2015), in his study of “Culture’s consequences: Economic barriers to owning mobile phones experienced by women in India”, he listed that one of the culture factor is “long power distance” that cause female to being restrict to get contact with any ICT resource. A “long power distance” is basically talking about when people is in high/long power distance culture the are unwilling to participate in decisions and prefer their superiors making decisions for them and giving them instructions which they could follow passively (Khatri, 2009). And this is one of the barrier that prevent women to being empower in ICT field. In a male-dominated country like India, women are tightly linked to their in groups such as families that continue to protect them which make them feel secure no matter how bad the family is. Eventually this barrier has created a tough in women mind to follow their superiors for example like husband, without the permission or instruction of their superior they will just ignore any thing that involve ICT for example like mobile phone or computer.

The second culture factor is because of “The gender role define by Indian society for women” (Potnis, 2015). In India, women are aspect to not suppose to be study beyond 12^th grade and that women’s role was as a wife and raising children at home (Roli Varmaand & Deeoak Kapur, 2015). With this culture, it has created an gap between the women and the ICT, many of women in India drop out of school in a very early stage of school which eventually it cause women to become less educate in any ICT field end up creating a gender digital divide. Even though, a women had finish their study and went for a work, female professionals are generally challenged to cope with multi-role expectation and with a little support from family members and even lesser consideration from superiors at the workplaces (Shah, 2015).

The following cultural factor is cause by the “woman’s attitude”, because of the culture itself they feel like they are mend to be housewife, it has shape the mind of women causing them to feel like they rather should not own any ICT equipment because they feel like it is an unnecessarily stuff to own and maybe even if they own those ICT equipment they might not even know how to use it too. Studies have also often hypothesized that computers appeal more to men and boys than to women and girls and therefore males are more likely to have had more computer-related experience (Hashim, 2008) compare with women, they will just feel like use it when necessary only and will not further learn it. It might be economic that cause them to having this attitude too, ICT is very common to own and it seem cheap for normal people but for an low or unstable income family ICT is and unreachable item.

Culture factor is a huge deal which can cause big hinder for a women to take advantage in the ICT revolution era. there are any women empower program that try to empower women to get contact with ICT, but it might just fail because of all of these culture factor that impose to women just like the village phone program (VPP) in Bangladesh study by Hossain & Beresford (2012). But however this VP Program in Bangladesh seem to be not very effective according to the research. Technology alone, even when deployed in women-targeted programmes, cannot alter the fundamental social relations into which it is introduced (Hossain & Beresford, 2012).

As a conclusion in this blog, technology (ICT) has grow so fast and have provide many convenience to people but however Inequality in gender relations can weaken any effect of ICT. To overcome this problem, first and foremost is that more research is needed to be done in this gender empowered in ICT field to understand more about what is causing this gender inequality in ICT and also to assists women to take greater control at house hold level and promotes their empowerment in society. Failing to tackle the problem will just make the gap of ICT and women to be even further apart.

Reference:

Dale, W.J. & Khuong, M.V., 2016. Telecommunications Policy. The ICT revolution, world economic growth, and policy issues.   doi:10.1016/j.telpol.2016.01.002

Devendra, P., 2015. Telematics amd Informatics 33 (2016) 356–369. Culture’s consequences: Economic barriers to owning mobile phones experienced by women in India.

Naresh, K., 2009. Consequences of Power Distance Orientation in Organisations. The Journal of Business Perspective. Vol. 13, No 1. DOI: 10.1177/097226290901300101

Reena, A.S., 2015. Review of Management. Work-life Balance and Gender: A Study of Professionals in India. Vol. 5, No. 1/2.

Roli, V. & Deepak, K., 2015. Communication of the ACM. Decoding Femininity in Computer Science in India. Vol. 58, No. 5. DOI:10.1145/2663339

Sarah, H. & Melanie, B., 2012. Paving the pathway for women's empowerment? A review of information and communication technology development in Bangladesh, Contemporary South Asia, 20:4, 455-469, DOI: 10.1080/09584935.2012.737309

Shirazi, F., 2012. Information and communication technology and women empowerment in Iran. Telematics Inf. 29, 45–55.

Sylvia, W., 1990. Theorizing Patriarchy. 89-18057.

Venkatesh, A., 2000. Computers and new media technologies in Indian households: based on a study of eight major cities in India.