Remote Connections to Empowerment

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Women Studies / Gender Studies, grade: 1st Class with Distinction(93%), University of Cambridge, course: BA Geography - Gender and Development, language: English, comment: This dissertation explores the gender dimension to ICT4D within Northern Ethiopia. It specifically focuses on the multi-faceted barriers to ICT access, and the resulting effect this has upon the social landscape. The dissertation was submitted for a BA in Geography at the University of Cambridge, and was marked at 93%. The dissertation has since won the nationally prestigious Gladstone Memorial Prize, the William Vaughan Lewis Prize, the Jessie Forbes Prize, the Eleanor Sidgwick Memorial Prize, and was nominated for the RGS Gender and Feminist Geography Research Group Dissertation Prize, abstract: Whilst the development of ICTs in Ethiopia has proved in many instances to be a promising tool for women's empowerment, a "complex web of factors" (Buskens & Webb, 2008) that determine access to these facilities has caused the scope of their benefit to be limited. In Ethiopia, engagements with ICTs in education and society continue to show a marked gender gap. To identify the obstacles to ICTs faced by women, the focus of analysis must extend beyond women themselves. Hence, this research has taken a multi-perspective approach, sampling a diverse range of respondents including men, women, youth, University students, IT professionals and government officials. This cross-section was taken from Gondar Town in the Amhara Region of Northern Ethiopia in order to situate the gendered barriers to ICT amongst a broader social, cultural, economic and political landscape. Therefore, since "ICT usage represents a social reality" (Wood, 2001: paragraph 5.7), "a gender lens alone becomes insufficient: other forms of social exclusions [...] have to be considered" (Rowbotham, 1995:65, Morgan, Heeks & Arun, 2004).