Promoting gender equality? An overview of some development-related uses of ICTs by women

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have created new economic and social opportunities the world over. Their use, however, continues to be governed by existing power relations where women frequently experience relative disadvantage. Amidst this inequality are individuals and organisations that are working to use ICTs to further gender equality. These are the issues addressed by the BRIDGE Cutting Edge Pack on Gender and ICTs. This section consists of extracts from the Overview Report part of the Pack. The first, most of the section ‘ICTs as tools to challenge gender inequality and promote women’s empowerment’ (a section on women and e-government has been omitted), describes ways in which women have been able to use ICTs to support new forms of information exchange, organisation, and empowerment. The second, taken from the textbox ‘Telecentres: Some Myths’ describes three assertions which frequently lead to problems in all forms of investment in development-related information exchanges with poor or less powerful groups, not only those relating to telecentres and women.