The Gender Digital Divide

There is also the digital divide between men and women in most countries. In 1990s most women within developing countries were in the deepest part of the divide. The digital divided issues included (UNIFEM Central and Eastern Europe, 2004).
• Access and control. Women had less opportunities to access to ICT than
men, as well as less power to decide how ICT are used and who had access to them;
• Education, training and development. This thematic areas included gender-sensitive training; focus on finding; managing; producing and disseminating information; developing policies and strategies for effective interventions; illiteracy; language;
• Industry and labor. This issue included tele-work, home-based work, health and environmental concerns, and the wage gap,
• Content and language. Women’s viewpoints, knowledge and interests were not adequately represented. Propagation of gender stereotypes persisted in online content. The English language dominated;
• Privacy and security. This involved the need to secure online spaces; international sharing of experiences of oppression; abuse of women’s rights; violence against women; trafficking; threats to a basic rights framework; government justification; and the creation of safe spaces, free from state censorship, monitoring and surveillance.
• Trafficking, pornography and censorship. These issues highlighted the use of ICT for propagation of violence against women, trafficking and pornography.
• Power and decision-making. Women remained underrepresented at all levels. Women had no access to control resources in ICT, and the bias of these being purely ‘technical’ areas prevailed. Space for civil society viewpoints was limited, and control over deregulation and privatization of telecommunication industry processes was compounded;
• Putting ICT to strategic use. The focus should be put on how to attract attention to issues of concern to women, reinforcing solidarity campaigns, enhancing traditional women’s networking activities, defending the rights of women to participate equally in civil and public life, and tackling marginalization and exclusion;
• The right to communicate. Advocacy for a new ICT environment must fully integrate gender concerns and women’s advancement. It is equally important to advocate for the right to communicate as a fundamental human right. Central to this strategy must be an agenda that strived for women’s equality, empowerment, advancement and gender justice.

Hafkin and Taggart (2001) also studied the situation of gender digital divide in developing countries and also found that most women Internet users in almost all developing countries are not representative of women in the country as a whole, but rather are part of a small, urban educated elite. The obstacles to women’s access to the ICT included literacy and education, language, time, cost, geographical location of facilities, social and cultural norms, and women’s computer and information search and dissemination skills. The study yielded the same results discussed by Goyal (2003) that women had less online access than men did, because they had less time, money, control, learning opportunities. Moreover women had more of other commitments, and they gave priority to others’ needs.