Last
week in our blog we talked about how the cultural factor effect the gender
empowerment in information and communication technology (ICT), so for the
second week and second post we will be discussing about how the gender
empowerment effect the education in ICT.
In todays modern technology world,
technology have already become one of the important tools in our life, and
technology have become a necessary gadget for living. The main reason is
because of the technology is a gateway for us to access world wide web and
enable us to learn or have higher education through online. Within these higher
educations, virtual learning environments (VLE), learning management system
(LMS), web-based trainings (WBT) and other Electronic-learning (E-learning)
applications and educational technologies should be easily within reach of
different kind of people. (Debevc et al.2007) Meaning that, we have many
different kinds od application, website, software or tools that allow us to
access to the web for obtaining information, news, self learning purpose which
helps us to improve our education institution or to accomplish our task.
According to Debevc all of this application or software should be set easily to
obtain and use by all the people and with no psychographic (age, gender and
etc) discrimination, but there are still some country practicing gender
inequality in empowerment belief and because of this cultural belief or
influence, it will limit the women to uses or learn the ICT.
Based on Abbasi (2009), he says that
gender inequality is a common accusation made against Islam and a disparity in
educational opportunities between men and women, so it is often that many
Islamic countries is cited as a primary example of gender inequality. Based on
his research, he is saying that Islamic and Muslim country is more towards gender
empowerment and gender inequality, so the Islamic female will always have a
much lower education level and due to they are restricted from learning a
higher level education, so they do not operate most of the ICT tools and
software application. This factor causes the Islamic female not able to enjoy
the benefit of the ICT and involve themselves in the modern technology world
like we do, but I may do not agree with his statement. The reason I do not agree
with his statement is because I am living in a multi-religious country which is
Malaysia. We can see that the practice of Muslim in Malaysia is quite different
with the statement above cited by Abbasi because in Malaysia we can see many of
the higher position in company or employee is female. This shows that, the
Muslim belief in Malaysia may be different with other Muslim countries or their
mindset have already change to a more modern thinking and they also know the
important and benefit of usage in ICT for future. Example, in my current
university, a lot of my university lectures are Malays and most of them are female,
this shows that Malaysia Muslim is not so gender inequality. (Utar.edu.my,
n.d.)
Besides that, ICT not only gives us
the functionality to access the web to get information and self learning, but
with the knowledge of ICT it also gives us the opportunities to get a job or
have a better life. According to UNESCO, women are
still the poorest of the world’s poor, representing 70 percent of the 1.3
billion people who live in absolute poverty (Data and statistic,2001). In the
previous blog post, we mentioned, in India,
women are aspect to not suppose to be study beyond 12th grade and
that women’s role was as a wife and raising children at home (Roli Varmaand and
Deeoak Kapur, 2015), maybe because of this cultural effect, women are less
educated and so they will think that they are born to serve their husband and
to take care of their family which is their child, and their duty is just to be
a good household, but if their what if accident happen to their husband, they
lost income and they could not go to work because they are lack of this ICT
skills. Next, during the past, women think that they are born to be household, so
they wont have any income and every month their husband will give them a
certain amount of money to pay bills and buy grocery so after paying those bill
and expenses they wont have any extra money for saving so this could also be
one of the reason that made woman the poorest in the world, because many of
them don’t have any income.
Furthermore, United Nations Secretary
General Kofi Annan admits with regret that, “When parents consider their
daughter’s future, they often see education as a hindrance, not a help, to
successful marriage and motherhood” (An- nan, 2000). Based on this statement,
even the western country have the gender inequality belief.Parent always have
the mindset that all their daughter need to do is learn how to be a good wife
and married a wealthy husband and it is just a waste of time and resources for
sending their daughter to go for a higher education, especially toward the ICT
program. The ICT program to their parent first thought will be like this kind
of job usually is for male, nerd to study and their job is to stay up late and
face the computer for their life working with it, so for sure parent will deny sending
their daughter to school to study or taking this courses program related to ICT
although their daughter is interested. But in my my point of view, I have seen
some female student taking higher education of ICT courses such as coding and
etc in my school, so it shows that some parent may started to change their old
mindset and leave freedom of choice for their daughter to choose what the like
to study, so it is a good sign showing our modern generation, parent is more
towards will of freedom.
Last but not least,
education factor, Information and communication technology (ICT) have its
beneficial and advantage but due to some factor and reason it stops woman from
improving and learn this advance technology so it will affect a country from
improving and slow economy rise. Based on World Bank President James D.
Wolfensohn, in his speech to the World Education Forum in Dakar Senegal, April
27, 2000, said, “No country has succeeded without educating its people;
education is key to sustaining growth and reducing poverty”. For some reason,
if some of the cultural beliefs are afraid of women over past male ability,
then it is time for everyone and all the countries to put aside their doubts
and fears about educating women, and give it the highest priority because those
countries that have higher education women shows that although is have a slower
population of growth but it has a faster economy growth and a higher level of
social cohesion result. As conclusion, Culture that denies choices to women and
girls must be changed (Wolfensohn, 2000), meaning that it is time to throw away
those gender inequality belief and girl themselves must not have the mindset of
born to be household and start to learn and get educated to help themselves and
improve the society. In my own point of view, if a country wanted to improve
and making a better economic, the country and the society must be fair and
equal to each other. Why? This is because nowadays most of the job we need ICT
tools to help us operate our work, example accountant needed Microsoft Excel
and programs to process their work, so if some people cant learn this skill and
knowledge then it will cause unemployment and poverty will happens. Everyone is
born with equal level, so change now to make a better future.
Reference:
Kimberly,
B.L. & Ira, Y.,2003. Information and Communication
Technology: Gender Issues in Developing Nations.Vol.6
Hadi,
S., Shojaee, M.& Susan, S, 2015. Using E-Learning
and ICT Courses in Educational Environment: A Review. Vol. 8, No. 1.
Raheeq,
A.A., 2009. Women and education in Islam
Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman. (2016). Utar.edu.my. Retrieved
8 March 2016
Roli,
V. & Deepak, K., 2015. Communication of the ACM. Decoding Femininity in
Computer Science in India. Vol. 58, No. 5. DOI:10.1145/2663339
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