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Young women and mobiles in inner-city India: Defining and measuring empowerment

Young women and mobiles in inner-city India: Defining and measuring empowerment. Meg Young Oct. 3, 2013. Background. BA Cultural Anthropology MS in Information with focus on ICTD Research experience in Detroit, Brazil, India. Research Question.

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Young women and mobiles in inner-city India: Defining and measuring empowerment

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  1. Young women and mobiles in inner-city India: Defining and measuring empowerment • Meg Young • Oct. 3, 2013

  2. Background • BA Cultural Anthropology • MS in Information with focus on ICTD • Research experience in Detroit, Brazil, India

  3. 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?’

  4. Past work: Mobile Facebook in low-resource areas of Hyderabad and Chennai 2. hardware 1. fieldwork 3. online

  5. Lessons learned: important to users • metaphor of addiction • spending on data • ‘time-pass’

  6. Lessons learned: non-instrumental use • self expression • making faraway friends • dating • response to offline social structure

  7. 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

  8. Proposed work: women and mobile use • recruit low-SES young women and families for preliminary surveys • interview mobile owners on use • informed consent observation of online activity • follow-up with original respondents

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. 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?

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