Disasters Are Gendered: What’s New? - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 265

household members. In the early warning literature on the use of mobile phones, the
gendered realities embedded in “sharing” phones is seldom recognized; instead, the
presumed near-ubiquity of mobile phones in households is taken as an encouraging
promise for early warning technologies. A review of early warning systems in
Vietnam, for example, typifi es this technological gender blind spot in discussing the
value of mobile-phone-based systems in upland regions of the country: “Cell phones
are widely available in Vietnam; even in rural areas; most adults have a simple cell
phone or have a family member with one” (Center for International Studies and
Cooperation 2011 , p. 8). However, given the gender issues identifi ed, “having a
family member” with a cell phone, for women more so than men, cannot be counted
as “having” a phone.
This is not to say that SMS early warning systems could never be useful to
women - rather, that such systems need to be designed and “marketed” to women in
very particular ways, taking into account not only their material status but prevailing
norms of appropriate femininity.
Other high-tech systems are similarly culturally positioned in gender-specifi c
ways. Internet-based early warning systems, either as stand-alone systems or inte-
grated with mobile alerts, are highly gendered, even more so than mobile phone
systems. On average across the developing world, nearly 25 % fewer women than
men have access to the Internet, and the gender gap soars to nearly 45 % in sub-
Saharan Africa. Even in rapidly growing economies, the gap is considerable. Nearly
35 % fewer women than men in South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa have
Internet access, and nearly 30 % in parts of eastern Europe and across Central Asia.
(Intel 2012 , p. 10). Gender-based barriers to Internet use range from internalized
gender norms to outright prohibition; for example, one in fi ve women in India and
Egypt report that the Internet is not “appropriate” for them. In some communities,
gender norms restrict women from walking on the street - and certainly from visit-
ing cybercafés that may be the only means of accessing a computer. Stereotypes
about women's lack of skill or interest in technology are also a factor. Family sup-
port is a critical enabler of women's Internet use; women who are active Internet
users are almost three times as likely as non-users to report that their families were
“very supportive” of their using the Internet, while non-users were six times more
likely to report family opposition (Intel 2012 , p. 12). As with mobile technologies,
barriers of illiteracy and cost affect women more than men.
Technologies such as mobile phones and computers may be new, but the issue of
gender-differentiated access and control over communication inside households is a
long-standing one - and is a long-standing impediment to effective early warning
systems that are technology dependent. Even rudimentary communication tools
such as radios, for example, are often contested inside households. Several micro-
studies establish that in many communities, if there is a household radio, women
may be prohibited from using it when they are alone, they don't determine what
stations are listened to, and they aren't allowed to turn the radio on or off (e.g., see
Kamal 2004 ). Feminist scholars for several decades now have underscored the