Gender, Technology and Development current issue

Can Career-Minded Young Women Reverse Gender Discrimination? A View from Bangalore's High-Tech Sector

Clark, A. W., Sekher, T.V. — 2008-08-26

Women's status in India is mixed, with many positive and negative indicators. The devaluation of daughters leads parents to resort to sex-selective abortions and infanticide— practices currently spreading to previously unaffected areas. In relation to this negative picture, interviews with women employed in the Information Technology (IT) sector in Bangalore suggest its opposite: a partial reversal of daughter devaluation is currently emerging in the families of young women in India's high-tech sector. Studies on employment in the IT sector in India have not adequately considered important long-term, intergenerational impacts of this new development on the whole culture of daughter devaluation.

This article strives to fill this gap by illustrating that when young women find opportunities to improve their financial autonomy, mobility and social acceptance in a male-dominated society, there are far-reaching implications for social demographic change, and also for gender equality, through the evolution of the two-income family model departing from the concept of the male breadwinner. This change may have wider

Mainstreaming Gender in Water Management: A Critical View

Panda, S. M. — 2008-08-26

This article offers a critical perspective on gender mainstreaming in water management in India by exploring the linkages between pre-given notions of ‘gender’ in mainstreaming rhetoric and selected practices of water management. Evaluative studies have shown that gender mainstreaming is not effective if restricted to practices that try to make women visible or simply add a gender component in an intervention program. The much publicized ‘Women, Water and Work’ campaign initiated by India's Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) by and large excluded men, and the newly-instituted water sector reforms, which promote privatization and marginalize women in the process, are selected for analysis to distill the meanings of gender and social interests. Prospects for effective gender mainstreaming in water management will hinge on how the main agenda can address the transformation of gender relations and treat water as a human right so as to realize the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in developing countries.

Identity, Technological Communication and Education in the Age of Globalization

Acharya, S. — 2008-08-26

The purpose of this article is to bring together various elements that portray the complex conceptuality of cultural identity within technological society. It engages in a theoretical inquiry into the questions of how the wide-ranging uses young people are now making of new information and communication technologies and global media may possess the potential to transform their cultural identity and how educational institutions should understand and respond to this evolving cultural reality. In discussing these questions, it refers to recent theories of cultural identity, especially as they relate to the increasing volume of global flows of ideas and ideologies, people, finance and cultural practices, and specific theories about the nature of technology in terms of explicating the relationship between society and technology. Finally, it concludes with implications for gender in educational practices of technology use.

‘We now live...in an open space-time, in which there are no more identities, only transformations’ (Zygmunt Bauman)

Disaster Mitigation and Furthering Women's Rights: Learning from the Tsunami

Akerkar, S. — 2008-08-26

Vulnerability has long been accepted as an important factor in post-disaster recovery which affects the ability of the survivors to recover from multi-dimensional impacts. This comparative and cross-cultural study of the effects of tsunami on women in four countries looks more closely into the factors and processes that have led to the exclusion of certain groups of women from relief and recovery assistance. These include female heads of households, widows, the elderly and those belonging to marginalized groups such as migrants and stateless communities. Examining the current gender-neutral framing of social protection systems in the disaster areas and their operations, I show that vulnerability is not only an outcome of localized and individual dimensions like age, gender and marital status but that they have deeper relations with national and global powers who perpetuate institutionalized discrimination through such systems, and how they are unable to give these groups of women the much needed protection and assistance to live with dignity. A case is made for the recognition of compounded discrimination based on the fact that their vulnerable positions prior to the disaster have indeed led to their exclusion from relief and recovery activities, leaving them poorer and worst-off. Further, to redress this trend I propose a women's human rights strategy in disaster management which adopts as its

Book Reviews

2008-08-26

Recent Books on Gender and Technology

2008-08-26

Comparative Studies on Policy and Gender Implications of Biotechnology and Biosafety in Thailand and China

2008-08-26

Norwegian Scholarships for the Master's and Doctoral Programs

2008-08-26