Young women and mobiles in inner-city India:

Defining and measuring empowerment

Meg YoungOct. 3, 2013

Background

•BA Cultural Anthropology

•MS in Information with focus on ICTD

•Research experience in Detroit, Brazil, India

Research Question

•How are young, low-SES women using mobiles and the internet?

•How do we define impact beyond economic indicators?

•What are offline impacts of online use?

•Are ICTs ‘empowering?’

Past work: Mobile Facebook in low-resource areas of Hyderabad and

Chennai

1. fieldwork

3. online

2. hardware

Lessons learned: important to users

•metaphor of addiction

•spending on data

•‘time-pass’

Lessons learned: non-instrumental use

•self expression

•making faraway friends

•dating

•response to offline social structure

Lessons learned: gender gap

• few female respondents

• fake profiles

• 37% less likely to own a phone in South Asia (GSMA)

•Women making >$75 a month, 26% have mobiles

Proposed work: women and mobile use

1.recruit low-SES young women and families for preliminary surveys

2.interview mobile owners on use

3.informed consent observation of online activity

4.follow-up with original respondents

Theory on non-instrumental use

•play as empowering: capabilities approach, e.g. “Development as Freedom”

•role of information production by users: Donner forthcoming, Robins 2002

•at the same time, amplification theory would argue that non-instrumental use decreases empowerment

Related work on young women & mobiles

•Offline impacts of online activity:

- Riyadh, Jeddha, Madinah: Al-Sagaddaf 2004

•Online dating:

- Kolkata: Chakraborty 2012

- Cape Town: Bosch 2010

Conclusion

•Opportunity: 76% of untapped mobile market is female

•Goal: inclusive idea of ‘ICT impact’

•Long term: Could ICTs be a lever to promote forms of gender equality?