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Women, ICTs and rural development

The importance of gender issues in agricultural development is now well-recognised. Similarly, uses for new information and communication technologies (ICTs) for agriculturalists have begun to attract significant interest. However, the intersection where gender issues meet ICTs in agriculture has been little explored. Use of and benefits from ICTs tend to reach women last, so that although poor farmers are beginning to use ICTs, the many women involved in agriculture have been largely excluded.

In order to explore issues of access, relevance to women, skills building and more, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) held a meeting to explore gender and agriculture in the information society, with reference to African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries which are included in the organisation’s mandate. The CTA is committed to gender mainstreaming in all of its activities, which include the promotion of ICTs in agriculture in the ACP region.

Globally, women are twice as likely as men to be involved in agricultural production, transport of goods and marketing. Their role in ensuring food security is crucial; when male family members leave to look for paid work elsewhere, the responsibility for feeding the family falls to women. Women, though, are less likely to be educated and tend to have less social and economic power than men. Factors such as living in rural areas, low levels of literacy, education and power, added to little leisure time, make women’s access to and use of ICTs far lower than men’s.

The CTA meeting identified a number of reasons why ICTs for agriculture and rural development may fail from a gender perspective:

Women often do not have money to buy equipment or pay for access
ICTs are often considered outside women’s domain, may only be available in places where women do not feel comfortable, or during unsuitable hours.
Rural women rarely find content that is in a local language or relevant to their context and needs.
Lack of time and skills and costs mean that women often do not use ICTs for potentially the most relevant uses such as business or education.
A lack of data and indicators for success make understanding the situation and scaling up good practice difficult.
Ignoring men’s perspectives can also lead to failure if men, who tend to hold power, feel excluded and stand in the way of programmes targeted at women.

Good practice and useful experience does exist however. Examples include making content both relevant and accessible to rural women, creating family friendly telecentres, simple, cheaper computers, the use of ICTs in child and adult education and more. The CTA meeting identified five priority areas for action for all working in rural development, gender and ICTS:

regularising and integrating the concept of gender throughout all development work and ensuring poor rural women participate throughout the process
formulating policies that prioritise gender equity and enable rural women to use ICTs to improve their livelihoods
improving access in rural areas through increased infrastructure, affordability and gender sensitive practices
content development that recognises women’s information and communication needs and allows them to share and develop content, using their specific, valuable knowledge
prioritising girls and women in ICT skills development initiatives.

The meeting led to the creation of a small grants programme, Gender and Agricultural and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS). Recent experience from GenARDIS-supported projects suggests that projects are involving women and addressing historical obstacles to gender equality in ICTs. New challenges lie in working with men to create change in social and economic structures that threaten the sustainability of efforts to achieve women’s empowerment and gender equity.

Source(s):
‘Gender and Agriculture in the Information Society’ A special report of a CTA meeting Wageningen, The Netherlands 11–13 September 2002, ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), by Helen Odame 2004 Full document.

Funded by: CTA

id21 Research Highlight: 15 April 2005

Further Information:
Helen Hambly Odame
Rural Extension Studies
School of Environmental Design and Rural Development
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario
Canada

Contact the contributor: hhambly@uoguelph.ca

University of Guelph, Canada

ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)
Postbus 380
6700 AJ Wageningen
The Netherlands

Tel: +31 317 467 100
Fax: +31 317 460 067
Contact the contributor: cta@cta.int

ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), Wageningen, The Netherlands

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