Terms of empowerment: Gender, ecology, and ICTs for development

Abstract

The obsession with technology as a primary tool for development without any regard for the social and cultural needs of society has not done much to help the cause of women or other disempowered groups. The accent on technology for technology’s sake is part of a masculinist worldview characterised by the tendency to equate technical competence with male gender identity (Judy Wajcman 1995). As a counter, a feminist approach to technology looks at ways of dealing with core life-sustaining issues of food, clothing, shelter, education, and a general sense of well being (Debashish Munshi and Priya Kurian 2003). Indeed, as Ingunn Moser (1995: 6) points out, science and technology are not only “social and cultural projects, formed in power structures and coloured by dominating values in the societies and the cultures in which they occur” but are political as well.