WOMEN'S LITERACY AND INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES: LESSONS THAT EXPERIENCE HAS TAUGHT US

Abstract

In a paper written for the World Summit on Information Society, 2005, Gurumurthy and Singh refer to the manner in which the neo-liberal economic policies (favouring free markets, globalization and reduction of the role of the government and the public sector) have successfully pushed the traditional development agenda from the national policy frameworks of many countries by capturing to its advantage, the theoretical space of information society (IS) developments in the South. According to them, at the turn of the 21st century, the neo-liberal agenda was helped by three developments that took place. First, the governments of the South took the new information and communication technologies (ICT) as an economic opportunity for pushing exports and for creating jobs in IT education and in ITenabled services (ITES) that would give them the boost they needed to propel themselves into the information society. Second, the private sector, mainly the multinational corporations (MNCs), was seen as the leader for providing infrastructure and technology. But thirdly, the development sector, long suspicious of the globalizing potential of the ICT, took a somewhat non-engaging stance to the new possibilities that had been opened up by ICT for development. This development was further aided by a framework that was laid at the global level, for mainstreaming ICT for development, now known as the ICT for development (ICTD) perspective. Once again, this policy framework was dominated mainly by the private sector, mostly MNCs from the North and consisted of euphoric predictions about the transformations ICTs would bring about.

Keywords

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