Information Communication Technology (ICT) for Rural Women’s Life in Bangladeshi Villages - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 173

Lucknow', which aimed at exploring whether
ICTs can expand the capacity of women engaged
in the informal sector to improve their livelihoods
(Batchelor & Norrish, 2004). In a survey of 17
infoDev funded ICT4D projects, Batchelor et al.
(2003) included a number of projects designed
to empower women in different ways, including
the Brazilian 'Strengthening Women's Leadership
in Community Development through Internet
Radio' and the African 'Abantu for Development'
project. Abantu, an NGO established by African
women in Europe in 1991, which entered into
the ICT4D arena in 1999, has trained women's
groups in Kenya in basic software and Internet
skills and brought together different sectors of the
business community to produce gender-sensitive
ICT policy recommendations. Other ICT4D initia-
tives in Africa include WOUGNET, a non-profit
non-governmental organization established in
2000 by several women's organizations in Uganda
to promote and support the use of ICTs and the
African Gender Research in Africa into ICTs
for Empowerment (GRACE) project. The latter
project has now been expanded to North Africa
and Asia (WSIS, 2008). Also in Uganda, Prahalad
& Hammond (2004) reported that centers run by
the Women's Information Resource Electronic
Service provided female entrepreneurs with infor-
mation on a range of issues, from market prices
to details on credit and trade support services.
Preferring money over information, many women
did not initially value information as a resource,
but were then taught how to use information to
improve their businesses (Bridges,2003). Africa
is also home to the Digital Diaspora Initiative,
supported by the United Nations Development
Fund for Women and African ICT entrepreneurs
in the Diaspora. It aims at helping women in the
country of origin of its members, use new ICTs and
create enabling environments for African women
to influence all aspects of ICT use and policy.
There is a debate about the value of ICTs for
development in general and for women's em-
powerment in particular. Critics of ICTs point to

the more pressing needs of women in developing
countries for safe water, adequate food, improved
health, and better education, rather than the provi-
sion of access to ICTs. The counter argument is
that health, water, food, education and ICT are not
in opposition to each other, but rather that ICTs
can be a tool to provide information on health
and food, as well as a carrier of education for
women and girls.
Researching ICT in terms of impact on equality
in the gender dimension, especially as it relates to.
community empowerment has become a challenge
for academicians, practitioners and international
donor agencies, particularly with increasing focus
on gender equality and empowerment by donor
countries (Tarasiewicz, 2003; Walsham & Sa-
hay, 2006; Manning, 2008). While the potential
of ICT for socio-economic development and
empowerment for different disadvantaged and
marginalised groups, such as women, the poor,
disabled, and indigenous groups is recognized
and has been addressed in many programmes,
only a few research publications available in the
public domain focus on how members of these
groups have used ICT for their empowerment.
For example, the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP) has provided assessment guide-
lines for ICT and gender initiatives in 25 UNDP
country offices (UNDP, 2004), but these are based
on a questionnaire at the organizational, rather
than the individual level. Point 114 of the WSIS
Tunis Agenda (WSIS, 2005) noted the launch,
in June 2004, of the Partnership on Measuring
ICT for Development , and its efforts to develop
a common set of ICT indicators, including point
114 (d) specific gender-disaggregated indica-
tors to measure the digital divide in its various
dimensions. The gender evaluation methodology
(GEM 1 ), developed by the Women's Networking
Support Programme of the Association for Pro-
gressive Communications as a tool to facilitate the
process of learning about using ICTs for gender
equality, is another initiative focusing on assess-
ing the impact of ICT programs and policies on