Women Empowerment through ICT - Measuring the concept through an Empowerment Analytical Framework

Promoting gender equality and empowering women is one of the important Millennium Development Goals by the United Nations. ICT can be a major enabling tool in achieving these Goals. ICT plays a crucial role in the growth and development of a society. Its significance lies not only on the easier exchange of information and communication but the growth and development it brings to the society through knowledge sharing. ICT enabled networks can promote gender equality through helping women to improve their economic activities (UN, 2005)[1]. ICT can play a significant role in empowering women through providing information on health care services, food, supporting in getting better education and thus making them well informed and helping to cope up with the knowledge economy. However, to what extent a women use ICT is strongly influenced by the type of social opportunities that she has. Similarly, the social identity of a woman in the culture that she belongs to also influences the use of technology. The paper center on an Action research project for Women Empowerment through ICT carried out in India about how technology can bring a positive impact on the lives of women and how can they be empowered through ICT. The project was done at University in Southern India and the research group was thirteen Masters students from the department of Women’s Studies. The word empowerment is so widely used in development projects across the world. However, there is no accepted method for measuring and tracking changes that happen with empowerment (Mosedale, 2003)[2]. How to gauge the concept of empowerment in order to measure related processes and outcomes is often a difficult task. The paper will discuss how the empowerment analytic framework developed by (Alsop & Heinsohn 2005)[3] and the “Women Empowerment Methodology developed by (Charlier. Et. al 2007)[4] forms a basis for measuring the empowerment processes and outcomes in the research.