Gender and Information Technology in Rural Bangladesh

2009 ◽  
pp. 1591-1594
Author(s):  
Lutfor Rahman ◽  
Nusrat Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Social Background ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Developing Regions ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Electronic Networks ◽  
Access To Knowledge

Information technology (IT) is transforming our personal, social, cultural, economic and political lives. But women in developing countries do not have equal access to knowledge, due to the fact that they do not have access to the new technologies at the same level as western European women. They need to understand the significance of new technologies and use them in relevant fields. IT can offer immense opportunities for virtually all girls and women in developing countries, including poor women living in rural areas. Developing countries like Bangladesh are usually seen as problematic hosts for ITs because most developing regions of the country lack economic resources and indigenous techno-scientific capabilities to develop and deploy IT infrastructures. The regions also tend not to make the best use of opportunities of technology transfer. The wider adoption of IT in the 1990s promised a globally connected community of equal participants in electronic networks. The Internet has enabled people to communicate regardless of race, sex, physical ability, location and social background (GVU, 1998). IT now offers access to a huge pool of information. The Internet enables worldwide communication that is cheaper, faster and more flexible than older media like e-mail, telephone, telex or fax.

Gender and Information Technology in Rural Bangladesh

2011 ◽  
pp. 423-425
Author(s):  
Lutfor Rahman ◽  
Nusrat Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Social Background ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Developing Regions ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Electronic Networks ◽  
Access To Knowledge

Information technology (IT) is transforming our personal, social, cultural, economic and political lives. But women in developing countries do not have equal access to knowledge, due to the fact that they do not have access to the new technologies at the same level as western European women. They need to understand the significance of new technologies and use them in relevant fields. IT can offer immense opportunities for virtually all girls and women in developing countries, including poor women living in rural areas. Developing countries like Bangladesh are usually seen as problematic hosts for ITs because most developing regions of the country lack economic resources and indigenous techno-scientific capabilities to develop and deploy IT infrastructures. The regions also tend not to make the best use of opportunities of technology transfer. The wider adoption of IT in the 1990s promised a globally connected community of equal participants in electronic networks. The Internet has enabled people to communicate regardless of race, sex, physical ability, location and social background (GVU, 1998). IT now offers access to a huge pool of information. The Internet enables worldwide communication that is cheaper, faster and more flexible than older media like e-mail, telephone, telex or fax.

scholarly journals Archives, the Digital Turn, and Governance in Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 101-118
Author(s):  
Fabienne Chamelot ◽  
Vincent Hiribarren ◽  
Marie Rodet
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Digital Archiving ◽  
Opening Up

Abstract:With the rise of information technology, an increasing proportion of public African archives are being digitized and made accessible on the internet. The same is being done to a certain extent with private archives too. As much as the new technologies are raising enthusiasm, they have prompted discussion among researchers and archivists, on subjects ranging from matters of intellectual property to sovereignty and governance. Digital archiving disrupts archival norms and practices, opening up a field of reflection relatively little explored by historians. This article therefore seeks to reflect on the digital turn of African archives as a subject for study in its own right, located at the crossroads of political and economic interests.

scholarly journals A Study on Impact of Digitalization Rural Development in Khambhat Taluka

2019 ◽  
pp. 220-224
Author(s):  
Sahima N.Vohra
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Internet Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Digital Gap

In recent years, information and communication technology (ICT) has rapidly spread across the globe, along with increased market penetration and easy availability of economical smartphones and cell phones with both wired and nonwired connections to access the Internet; this leapfrogging in the Internet access is true even in the rural areas of the world's developing countries. This study explored the interplay between contextual and individual factors related to Internet adoption in isolated rural communities. By investigating 10 remote villages throughout Chile that received Internet access infrastructure in 2010–2011, we identified 3 areas in which contextual and individual factors are intertwined.1.Geogeaphical isolation,2. the communities' aging population also represented a strong challenge because they lack young people, a relevant technology socialization agent.3.Jon and economic. When the Internet has reached the vast majority of the population, isolated communities confront specific challenges that we need to consider in policy?making decisions. As Internet access spreads and the level of penetration reaches high percentages in both developed and developing countries, the urban–rural digital gap remains strong (e.g., LaRose, Strover, Gregg, &Straubhaar, 2011; Rivera, Lima & Castillo 2014). Thus, many policy?making efforts have promoted online connection in rural areas. For example, in the United States, the Department of Agriculture has promoted broadband access programs such as the Sustainable Broadband Adoption Program (LaRose et al., 2012).

Gender and ICTs in Zamibia

2011 ◽  
pp. 417-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kutoma Jacqueline Wakunuma
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Economic Empowerment ◽  
Information Communication Technologies ◽  
Information Communication ◽  
Real Situation

This article looks at gender equality combined with social and economic empowerment within the context of information communication technologies (ICTs). It discusses rhetoric surrounding the promotion of ICTs as tools for social and economic empowerment and subsequently challenges whether such rhetoric does mirror the real situation on the ground, especially as it relates to developing countries like Zambia. The main focus is underprivileged women, especially those in rural areas, and how access, or indeed the lack of it, to ICTs like the Internet and mobile phones does actually affect their daily existence.

Education Trends in Thai Businesses Utilizing Information Technology

2005 ◽  
pp. 256-262
Author(s):  
Heather Arthur-Gray ◽  
John Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Digital Divide ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Knowledge Society ◽  
Family Welfare ◽  
Educational Expenditures ◽  
The North ◽  
Educational Trends ◽  
Information Poverty

There is a “deep-rooted inequality situation in the Thai economy and society” (Krongkaewa & Kakwanib, 2003). This inequality permeates all aspects of Thai society, highlighting Thailand’s current economic vulnerability as they try to address policies that will support sustainable growth while reducing these inequalities. With growing concern about the digital divide, Thailand is an important and interesting region to study. These concerns have highlighted a widening technology gap causing a “new type of poverty called information poverty” (Marshall, Taylor, & Yu, 2003; UNDP, 1998). There has been very little prior research that has examined the take-up of information technology in this region. Although the digital divide has been the concern of all countries, there are now additional concerns about the information divide, which could increase further the gap between developed and developing countries. Education has been highlighted as an important area of policy focus. However, should developing countries such as Thailand be targeting their education resources towards specific fields that will support research and development into new technologies aimed at reducing the digital and information divide? “Women produce more than half the world’s food and spend most of their income on family welfare and food, but a lack of access to services, education and technologies keeps them uninvolved in the decision-making processes” (Sarker, 2003). Due to this lack of skills or literacy, women are unlikely to be able to directly use or even to understand the importance on information technology (Sarker, 2003). Thailand’s policy commitment to advancing science and technology should be in juxtaposition with higher “educational expenditures, technical training, and building institutions necessary to create a knowledge society” (Wilson III, 2000). This would support the notion that “pro-poor public access policies” would help overcome some of the educational and access barriers, as long as they were developed with “effective regulatory mechanisms” (Sarker, 2003). This research incorporates an analysis of educational trends within 31 non-agricultural Thai businesses in Chiang Mai, with a collective total number of employees of over 3,000, that were subjects of a pilot study conducted in the north of Thailand. This article considers the educational trends of employees in these businesses, which may support electronic enablement and digital divide reduction.

Mobile Phones, Developing Countries and Learning

2011 ◽  
pp. 120-137
Author(s):  
Elba del Carmen Valderrama Bahamóndez ◽  
Albrecht Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Internet Access ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Developing Regions ◽  
The World ◽  
Educational Applications

The Internet and computers are accessible to only half of the population in the world. For the other half, computers and the Internet are almost alien concepts. This half has no medium for gathering information, and they are computer illiterate. In addition, it is well-known, that the use of computers and the Internet, directly and indirectly, enhance the learning process. Therefore, students from under privileged areas of developing regions of the world are, clearly, at a disadvantage compared to their peers in developed countries. However, mobile phones could change this situation. In developing countries, mobile phones are far more accessible than computers or Internet access. This high accessibility together with the multiple functionalities of mobile phones, allow for the potential to build feasible educational applications that enhance the learning experiences of students in developing countries. Such opportunities enable the students’ experiences to be made proportionate to the other half of the world, with a real mechanism for gathering information.

Linking Communities to Global Policymaking

2011 ◽  
pp. 470-493
Author(s):  
John Lawrence ◽  
Janice Brodman
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Internet Service ◽  
The World ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Social Environmental ◽  
Access To Knowledge ◽  
Key Resources

The 1990s have been marked by extraordinary changes in many of the fundamental elements of human existence, among the most powerful, the introduction of a global networking system. Indeed, it is difficult to consider thoughtfully any major aspect of our socio-economic-political circumstances, current and future, that are not in some way profoundly affected by this revolution. For those of us with Internet service, even a few keystrokes on a laptop computer can now put us in touch with friends, family, colleagues, or strangers almost anywhere in the world, certainly on all seven continents including Antarctica. Business can be conducted, money transferred, medical records evaluated, books/papers jointly written and edited, inventions created, ideas shared. The unprecedented ease and speed of access to knowledge and experience, and increasingly commerce, is at the heart of the promise of the new technologies for cyberconnectivity. Communities in all parts of the world are finding ways to make the Internet serve them, and becoming energized, organized and activated as a result. Two factors, however, contribute to a sobering backdrop that frames further exploration of these exciting new frontiers. First, access to the underlying technologies is severely constrained in developing countries, and in poorer communities of industrialized countries. Differential access to key resources, such as capital, electricity, telephone service, exacerbates gaps between the haves and the have-nots. Furthermore, even for those who gain basic access, other constraints, such as predominance of “colonial” languages, limit their ability to take advantage of opportunities offered by the technology. Second, the glitter of cybertechnology tends to divert us from addressing broader problems of inequities in social and economic development, and their associated ecological consequences. These have been sharply documented in the UNDP Human Development Report Series. (The most recent of these 10 annual Human Development Reports, that of July 1999, can be found at: http://www.undp.org/hdro/99.htm.) This chapter presents the results of an experiment to bring together these two contemporary forces — the Internet explosion, and a sense of growing inequality in economic and political power — to create a new channel into global decision making fora, particularly for communities that seem increasingly to be left behind. The context for this effort was the United Nations, and a series of global conferences that focused attention on the major social, environmental, and economic issues of our time. The objective was to explore ways to use new electronic networking to link communities around the world more directly to top level decision makers.

Information Technology and Islamic Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-81
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Relationship Marketing ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Relationship Building ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Positive Experience ◽  
Islamic Ethics ◽  
Workplace Ethics ◽  
Major Interest ◽  
The Way

The whole issue of information technology is of major interest for the whole society. The new millennium has provided some of the most exciting technological advancements, which has transformed the way businesses are managed, organised, and developed. The technology is a phenomenon, and it is dramatically changing the way businesses deal with their customers. In a climate of increased competition, expansion of new technologies, possible drop in customer numbers, one way of increasing customer numbers would be by enhancing customer experiences on the internet. It is widely accepted that relationship marketing enhances with positive experience, and the internet is a key relationship building tool. The focus of the chapter is that Islamic workplace ethics believes that confidential sharing of information should only be given to limited and relevant stakeholders in the business.

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