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Irem Güney-Frahm
To cite this article: Irem Güney-Frahm (2018): A new era for women? Some reflections on blind
spots of ICT-based development projects for women’s entrepreneurship and empowerment ,
Gender, Technology and Development, DOI: 10.1080/09718524.2018.1506659
Article views: 12
RESEARCH ARTICLE
CONTACT Irem G€
uney-Frahm irem.guney-frahm@unisg.ch University of St Gallen, St Gallen, Switzerland
ß 2018 Asian Institute of Technology
2 €
I. GUNEY-FRAHM
higher insecurity across the board, these criteria for a higher quality of work are rele-
vant for both women and men. Income generation should be an activity that does
not deteriorate one’s life – on the contrary, work should be there to improve people’s
daily life.
Moreover, there is empirical evidence that despite their difficult working conditions
and the amount of time spent on income-generating activities, many women tend to
undermine the value of their own income, for example by referring to themselves as
‘housewives’ (Mies, 2012 [1982]; Gu €ney-Frahm, 2014). Hence, various aspects need to
be incorporated into the design of development interventions to promote women’s
empowerment through income-generating activities. A good project design which
aims at a high quality of work for women should consider women’s time and level of
income, women’s own perception of their work as ‘work’ and women’s health as well
as that their work does not disadvantage other members of society like their daugh-
ters or elderly female family members who are already in a disadvantaged position
(Gu€ney-Frahm, 2014, 2015).
In addition, in many countries women’s marginalized way of taking part in the labor
market has been a solution for them to earn money in a way that does not endanger
their husband’s as well as their own prestige in the community (Erman et al., 2002). In
predominantly Muslim countries including Turkey one often encounters the patterns
of ‘classic patriarchy’ (Kandiyoti, 1988). An important element in this system is that in
its traditional application a family’s status primarily depends on the woman’s sexuality
and her interactions with other men outside of her family which results in ‘seclusion’
in a parallel female world where women and men’s spheres of daily lives are sepa-
rated and women are confined within the domestic sphere (D.A. Kandiyoti &
Kandiyoti, 1987; Kandiyoti, 1988).
However, due to increasing living costs since the 1980s in many countries like
Turkey, women of the urban poor have had to work without testing the cultural
boundaries put on their mobility and visibility in society (Erman et al., 2002). Hence,
letting women participate in the labor market in a marginalized and almost
‘invisible’ way through a development intervention would only be a further
reinforcement of their disadvantaged position in society. This is why women’s visibil-
ity and their participation in public life become the second criteria to evaluate wom-
en’s empowerment through income-generating development projects and female
entrepreneurship from a feminist perspective that seeks to establish gender equality
(Gu€ney-Frahm, 2014, 2015, 2016).
A third criterion that will guide this article is the existence of a gender identity
beyond motherhood in the conceptualization of development projects. For example,
many development projects like microcredits that purport to support female entrepre-
neurship have been designed for mothers who were expected to fulfil their families’
needs and consequently not for the goal of equal participation of women in the labor
market or in society (Ecevit, 2007; Gu €ney-Frahm, 2014, 2016). It is thus always worth
scrutinizing to what extent development projects to support female entrepreneurship
(and thus female empowerment) actually challenge the notion that women are pri-
marily mothers and consequently challenge the traditional gender identities within
the domestic sphere.
GENDER, TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT 5
in the worldwide initiative ‘Girls Excelling in Math and Science’, which uses Skype
to bring female professionals together with secondary school girls to act as their
mentors (The Earth Institute of Columbia University & Ericsson, 2016, p. 55).
However academic research also shows that these educational opportunities may
actually be associated with the reinforcement of gender stereotypes. Yeasmin,
Rahman, and Murthy’s study (2012) study of two Bangladeshi nongovernmental
organizations that offer ICT-based education services reveals that the learning mate-
rials were gender-biased and presented women primarily as caregivers and associ-
ated with reproductive domestic work.
A further way to use ICT in development is to support political participation by
increasing the accessibility of public services and intensifying the relationship between
governments and civil society. For example, The UNDP runs an e-governance project
that is meant to increase online public services and increase transparency in
Uzbekistan (UNDP, 2017c). The UNDP also promoted a pilot project for ‘e-citizenship’
in Western Turkey as well as an automated consulate system for the Turkish Ministry
of Foreign Affairs (UNDP, n.d.). Hafkin (2002, p. 15) from the UN’s Division for the
Advancement of Women states that ‘[w]omen could benefit from many e-government
services especially land and voter registration and license applications. They would
especially profit from online availability of services that would otherwise require travel
to the capital city’. On the other hand, Al-Rababah and Abu-Shanab’s study (2010) on
a Jordanian e-government project shows that a substantial portion of women in their
research were not aware of the e-government services and that they needed add-
itional measures including ICT-training to be able to use these services.
There are also ICT-based projects to support civil society and in particular women’s
advocacy groups. The Women of Uganda Network, for example, aims at ‘promoting
the use of ICTs by women and women organizations in Uganda so that opportunities
presented by ICTs can be used to effectively address national and local issues of sus-
tainable development, governance and service delivery’ (ICT4Democracy, 2017). The
UN (2010) views digital technologies and the internet as ‘a strategic opportunity’ for
the civil society to disseminate knowledge about their work and to increase their
work’s efficiency and influence. To €renli’s research (To€renli, 2005) on Turkey however
claims that since it is mostly middle class and upper-middle class women that have
access to ICT, women’s advocacy groups cannot reach the more disadvantaged mem-
bers of the society.
ICT are also used in development interventions in the economic sector. In inter-
national development, ICTs are perceived as a solution for women’s restricted access
to capital and business skills in that they can support financial inclusion and women’s
entrepreneurship by way of digital financial services (The Earth Institute of Columbia
University & Ericsson, 2016, pp. 32–45). An oft-cited example is mobile money
(UNCTAD 2013, p. 5; The Earth Institute of Columbia University & Ericsson, 2016,
pp. 33–42) through which women can gain access to financial services without neces-
sarily depending on the traditional banking system. Furthermore, development policy
aims at supporting female entrepreneurs to receive ICT training which they can use to
increase their business skills. Pem-Consult and Asian Development Bank for instance
helped female entrepreneurs in Armenia to gain general computer literacy ranging
GENDER, TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT 7
from searching for information on the web to managing an email account (Pem
Consult, 2017).
In line with these positive expectations, an examination of two individual case stud-
ies of successful female entrepreneurs from Nigeria reveals that these entrepreneurs
view ICT skills as essential for their success in the market (Motilewa, Onakoya, & Oke,
2015). Similarly, Martin and Wright (2005) show that ICT-skills have enabled female
entrepreneurs to improve their business ideas and services like online marketing.
Joseph (2013) finds that the ICT contributed to women’s lives in India and have the
potential to provide women with new opportunities, yet there is also the need to use
them in a more efficient way. On the other hand, To €renli’s research (2010) on home-
based workers in Turkey demonstrates that access to ICT like owning a computer does
not offer a solution to women’s disadvantaged position as workers in the informal sec-
tor and that home-based workers have not made use of access to ICTs for their
income generating activities.
A further application of ICT in economic development interventions is to offer
digital selling platforms and thus access to markets to female entrepreneurs (The
Earth Institute of Columbia University & Ericsson, 2016, p. 39). Thas, Ramilo, and Cinco
(2007) give examples from Korea and Malaysia where governments promoted training
and the establishment of a digital platform for freelance women and home-based
workers to engage in commercial activities. In the Malaysian platform E-Entrepreneurs
Women Trade Center, for example, the products range from hijab clothing to bakery
products (E-Entrepreneurs Women Trade Center, 2017). A similar project of an e-com-
merce platform exists in Turkey, too. Supported by Vodafone Turkey, the project
Women First (Once € Kadın) in its own words promotes female entrepreneurship
through the provision of a digital selling platform as well as through trainings offered
to women to develop their business skills so that they are able to produce and sell
goods in this platform. The goods that are marketed consist of traditional handicrafts,
€
home textiles, clothing and home accessories (Girişimcilikte Once Kadin, 2017).
Existing literature on these platforms shows the positive aspects or deals with bar-
riers to enter the e-commerce rather than problematizing the idea of e-commerce
itself. For example, the Malaysian ewtc.my or similar platforms for e-commerce are for
Razak and Pisal (2016) an important opportunity for Muslim women to enter the
digital world. In another study on Thailand’s female home-based workers, Intaratat
(2016, p. 88) names marginalization of women in the labor market due to the domes-
tic work burden, female invisibility in the production process and masculine culture of
technology as the ‘three main issues concerning Thai women homeworkers using ICTs’
and concludes that programs that are also supported by the government have had a
positive impact on the empowerment of home-based workers (Intaratat 2016, p. 100)
who sell similar products like their colleagues in Turkey and Malaysia. Maier and Nair-
Reichert (2007) highlight the importance of women’s entrepreneurial activities in e-
commerce for their empowerment and argue that a socio-cultural change may occur
due to female entrepreneurship. Research about these platforms seems to be one of
the least extensive in the study of ICT and women’s empowerment.
To conclude, the views on the use of ICT to promote women’s empowerment
resemble the idea of ‘virtuous spirals’ for female empowerment, which Mayoux (1999)
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I. GUNEY-FRAHM
originally used for expectations from microcredit programs: these expectations are
shaped by the idea that a woman gains more power in one domain, for example by
earning income, and then uses that newly gained power in other spheres like to
increase her voice in her household, then in her community and finally in society
(Mayoux, 1999). At the same time, the research on women’s empowerment and ICT is
limited and the cited academic studies demonstrate that their impact is controversial.
income and being a respected actor in the market. It should also involve innovation
and the attempt to fill a gap in the market (Gu €ney-Frahm, 2013b, 2014, 2016).
Interestingly, international development policy actually names these aspects as import-
ant characteristics of entrepreneurs. In an OECD Working Paper on entrepreneurial
activity that is based on an extensive review of existing definitions of entrepreneur-
ship, entrepreneurs are defined as ‘those persons (business owners) who seek to gen-
erate value, through the creation or expansion of economic activity, by identifying
and exploiting new products, processes or markets’ (Ahmad & Seymour, 2008, p. 14).
The authors (2008, p. 14) further highlight that ‘entrepreneurial activities require the
leveraging of resources and capabilities through innovation, but the opportunities
themselves always relate to the identification of either new products, processes or
markets’. The UNDP Evaluation Office relies on a similar definition of entrepreneurship:
‘Entrepreneurship can be defined as the process of using private initiative to transform
a business concept into a new venture or to grow and diversify an existing venture or
enterprise with high growth potential. Entrepreneurs identify an innovation to seize
an opportunity, mobilize money and management skills, and take calculated risks to
open markets for new products, processes and services’ (UNDP, 1999). Thus, it is
contradictory with the policymakers’ own guidelines to encourage poor women to
join the labor market in a way that does not fit their own definition of
entrepreneurship.
The lack of entrepreneurial innovation in women’s entrepreneurship in these pro-
grams results in a market in which all participants sell the same goods – an aspect
that is highlighted by previous research on marginalized female entrepreneurs.
Research on microcredit-takers in Turkey for example has shown that the more
women are involved in this system, the more competitive and thus problematic the
market (Adaman & Bulut, 2007, pp. 55-60; Gu €ney-Frahm, 2013b, 2014). Similar find-
€
ings are expressed by Torenli (2010) who argues that home-based workers’ working
conditions in Turkey result in increased competition in the market and undervalu-
ation of women’s work. If a feminist understanding of empowerment through a
development intervention rests on the assumption that women’s work cannot be
defined as being of high quality if this work puts society’s already marginalized
members into a further disadvantaged position, then the competition in a highly
problematic market structure and the resulting lack of solidarity among disadvan-
taged women make ICT’s potential to contribute to women’s empowerment appear
questionable.
ICT could and should be used in other ways that support female entrepreneurship
for new business ideas instead of relying on women’s existing skills – criticism that is
also directed towards microcredits (Gu €ney-Frahm, 2014; see also Yunus & Jolis, 2007).
Women could be encouraged to become engaged in other digital jobs. Moreover, fur-
ther training for business skills could be provided via ICT so that women’s main cus-
tomers in their e-commercial activities are not primarily women who are more likely
to buy traditional handicrafts and home decoration goods. In addition, ICT could be
employed for networking among women entrepreneurs including home-based ven-
€renli 2010) so that they can exchange ideas
dors to promote ‘solidaristic practices’ (To
and establish a supportive network.
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I. GUNEY-FRAHM
cannot change if women are expected to stay at home and take part in the labor mar-
ket from home by producing and selling goods that had been produced by mothers
for generations. Moreover, between the lines, ICT-based projects are regarded as time-
savers for women, an understanding which does not necessarily challenge the under-
lying reasons for women’s lack of time. The products that are produced and sold in
the online selling platforms and for which women receive training imply that it is nor-
mal that women’s paid and unpaid activities could be very similar to each other and
that an income can be earned while continuing to fulfil their household duties (see
also Gu€ney-Frahm, 2014). This picture that is referred to as women’s entrepreneurship
is reminiscent of Ekinsmyth’s work on ‘mumpreneurship’, which ‘involves the configur-
ing of a business around the spatio-temporal routines of childcare work’ (Ekinsmyth,
2014, p. 1235). In other words, the provision of online selling platforms for home-
based workers is premised on the synonymous use and understanding of the words
women and mothers.
Undoubtedly, ICT cannot be the only solution for the unequal distribution of child-
care work between the sexes. Additional interventions by the state and the private
sector are necessary to increase the number of childcare facilities. What ICT-based
development projects can do however is that project designers ask themselves in the
beginning if the women they target stay at home because they want to or because
they do not have other options. Here it is worth remembering Amartya Sen’s philoso-
phy that basically points to the importance of increasing the alternatives for people’s
lives through development interventions (Sen, 2001; Keleher, 2007). An additional
measure could be to allow mothers who are engaged in e-commercial activities to
exchange their experiences and other ideas in the offline reality so that they are
above all outside of their home.
Nevertheless, even if projects may offer an improvement in the target groups’ daily
lives from their own perspective one should use caution before describing the process
as empowerment. For something to be considered empowerment from a feminist per-
spective, it must also be analyzed by looking at changes in patriarchal structures and
gender inequality.
The discussion here has revealed that several critical aspects emerge at exactly the
point where female empowerment via female entrepreneurship is linked to the use of
ICTs. The use of ICTs to promote female entrepreneurship should go beyond women’s
traditional roles. Moreover, it ought to take place in a way that allows women to be
visible in the public space and guarantees a stable, sustainable income. The use of
ICTs to promote female empowerment via promoting female entrepreneurship should
go beyond using and relying on women’s existing skills and gender norms. Without
altering or at least striving to alter the marginalization of women in the labor market,
development interventions are by necessity unable to effect a change in gender
inequality. As long as this is not the case, the term “entrepreneurship” will be mislead-
ing to describe women’s home-based income-generating activities. Recalling the
words of a microcredit-taker, women will remain “working housewives” rather than
become “entrepreneurs” (Gu €ney-Frahm, 2014). In other words, new technologies which
are today presented as the greatest indicators of a new era in human history should
also mean new entrepreneurial activities for women of the developing world.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and
Innovation of the University of Edinburgh for hosting her as visiting research fellow in 2017, as
well as to the anoynmous reviewers for their suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Irem Gu€ney-Frahm works primarily on questions of gender and development and is currently
based in Switzerland. She has studied economics, European studies and gender studies in
Istanbul, Bath and Berlin.
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