Community wireless networks, ict social application development: contribution for women empowerment.

Cybersecurity and ICT Applications EssayCompetition
Topic: Connecting the world responsibly: empowering women and girls through creative uses of ICT

Community wireless networks, ICT social application development: contribution for women empowerment.

By: Carlos Andrés Gómez Ruiz
Bogotá, Republic of Colombia

“The most effective tool for development
is the empowerment of women”. KofiAnnan

IT and communication boom has transformed social, economic and cultural relations in the last decades. Communities with higher buying power have developed technologies, giving them access to modern information systems; meanwhile communities with lower buying power have played an spectator role, new technologies have not been for a long time part of their daily live, making a deepdifference in the way technology is acquire, thus creating a digital divide.

The digital divide can be studied from an economic and technological point of view, but when every class is looked into many psychological factors can be seen, and these cause the problem to be complex.

Actually many problems associated to a tradition of women social exclusion, being evident in the least favoredcommunities. Women due to their natural ability of child bearing have been playing the role of mothers, sister and daughters, but in less developed communities this role have turned in the major cause to denied their personal development. Women have been assigned to housekeeping duties and in the case of single mothers to perform productive labor (work). In both cases the possibility to access academicprograms or fill important administrative posts or government agency posts is low. For instance, illiterate population from Spain shows that in the less favorably women have been the less helped by the literate programs, but it is also seen that if women get to access education programs and reach superior levels the average between women and men levels off. Figure 1 and 2 show this case in Spain.Fig. 1. Distribution of Spain’s Illiterate population - 2007

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Source: Institute for Women (Ministry of equality), Madrid - Spain
Catalog "Women in numbers 1983-2008"

Fig. 2. Distribution of Spain’s college population - 2007

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Source: Institute for Women (Ministry of equality), Madrid - Spain
Catalog "Women in numbers 1983-2008"

The technological revolutionshows that this exclusion is also seen in the technology plane. The digital divide separates the less favored communities in the Society of information evidence that the participation of gender also marks a digital divide; there are cultural factors which affect even communities with a bigger buying power: gender digital divide.

To reduce any digital divide the development of new applicationssocial ICT is needed. ICT have turned from being only a technological mean to one of the most important in the social and economic organization worldly: the individualism of work, the customization of the markets and the betterment of apprenticeship, the expansion of medicine, the drawing of government with its citizens, that is to say the ICT constitute a fundamental element for the modern developmentin any aspect of society.

ICT applications can constitute an important way to eradicate poverty, working in conjunction with the different organization all around the world to improve the environment in all it´s aspects; especially the part that refers to global warming, as well as the cooperation with developing countries, but there must be a perspective of gender equality that would allowthe empowerment of women in society, technology makes part in this process, ICT´S can promote the agenda of sexual and reproductive rights.

Use of ICT for women empowerment

1. Connectivity

Even when women empowerment is a subject which includes all social classes, the creative use of ICT for connectivity must be focus on the less favored sectors now that these are the ones which...