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Globalization, Technology Diffusion and Gender Disparity: Social Impacts of ICTs

Globalization, Technology Diffusion and Gender Disparity: Social Impacts of ICTs
Author(s)/Editor(s): Rekha Pande (University of Hyderabad, India)and Theo van der Weide (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands)
Copyright: ©2012
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-0020-1
ISBN13: 9781466600201
ISBN10: 1466600209
EISBN13: 9781466600218

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Description

In an era characterized by data globalization, there is, paradoxically, a shortage of literature on the social impact of globalization, technology diffusion, and gender disparity. The new information and knowledge society may, in fact, aggravate the development and poverty gap instead of closing it. The cultural construction of knowledge exacerbates class, ethnic, and gender divides, and ICT has contributed to this problem.

Globalization, Technology Diffusion and Gender Disparity: Social Impacts of ICTs discusses theoretical aspects of gender issues in ICT and presents a number of case studies from various countries. Covering topics such as social networking, ICT use among women, the digital divide, and theoretical approaches to gender gaps and ICT, this book aims to provide a strong foundation on ICT and digital equity that will be useful to a broad audience comprised of students, researchers, and policymakers.



Table of Contents

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Preface


Rapid changes in the Global economy consequential to Globalization have lead to the emergence of a wide array of discourses conveying different meanings and in their wake displacing certain meta narratives that used to be the dominant paradigm, which also served as a certain reference point. The rise of new technologies and interaction of women in different capacities from different parts of the world have all contributed to making of these new narratives that seek to understand these changes from different standpoints concerned with the various facts of technology and more precisely information and communication technologies like cyber crime, call centre work, distance learning, polity, and culture.

ICT provided the connecting thread to link all these emergent areas that have become a definite part of the lives of the most people in the world. The effects of these have been the subject of many scholarly works. 

However, the rapid pace at which change occurs necessitated the examination of certain issues that have only recently arisen, and also look afresh at the new narratives, particularly the question of work that has occupied centre stage amongst many discourses. Another issue that has been revisited a number of times, owing to its centrality, is the question of digital divide, which the book attempted to look at afresh, incorporating narratives from the South.  A grey area, not on many agendas, is cybercrimes. These still influence the lives of many people, particularly women, and are also incorporated in this volume. 

Any volume on ICT will be incomplete without a survey of the fundamental issues, serving as an introductory anchor to the whole process of ICT and its interaction with gender under the rubric of globalization. The fundamental issues have not disappeared or been solved, though certain advances have been made. It is thus imperative to weigh both these opinions and at the same offer nuanced analysis in contextual settings.  This is an exercise that has been attempted in this volume. The range of chapters is also diverse, spanning different continents, and thereby mapping the simultaneous spread of technology in different settings.  It has to be acknowledged that the cultural mediation of technology that was underplayed during the initial euphoria of globalization is a theme that has to be seriously contended with and the chapters here focus on the cultural rootedness of the penetration of technology in places as diverse as Africa, Europe, India, and the Philippines.

A critique that has emerged against such studies is the primacy given to consumption by elaborate use of language and wordplay, seeking to negate the material basis of production. Taking this criticism seriously, this volume focuses on the material basis of development without excessive use of jargons and at the same time gives a great deal of empirical data to situate the developments on terra firma. We hope that this volume will serve as a new addition to the existing works on ICT and Globalisation.

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Reviews and Testimonials

This volume focuses on the material basis of development without excessive use of jargons and at the same time gives a great deal of empirical data to situate the developments on terra firma. We hope that this volume will serve as a new addition to the existing works on ICT and Globalisation.

– Rekha Pande (University of Hyderabad, Indi) Theo Van der Weide (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands)

Author's/Editor's Biography

Rekha Pande (Ed.)
Rekha Pande is the Head of Centre for Women’s Studies and a faculty member in the Department of History at University of Hyderabad. Her work is in the interdisciplinary area of History and Women’s Studies. She has published in the area of Women’s history, cultural history, women and the Bhakti movement, socialization and family, girl child, child labor, women’s work, health, and violence against women, Women’s Movement, and impact of globalization on women in a number of journals both in India and abroad. She is the author of five books, Women in Nation Building- A Multi dimensional perspective( 2007), [Ed.] with Shivkumar Nalini and Mahalingam, Rema), Panchajanya Publications, Hyderabad; Religious Reform movement in Medieval India ( 2005) Gyan Publishers, New Delhi; Gender issues in the Police (2000) S.V.P. National Police Academy, Hyderabad; Child Labour in the Beedi industry(1998), Delta Publishers, Hyderabad; and Succession Struggle in the Delhi Sultanate (1990) Commonwealth Publication, New Delhi. She has been the Editor of International Feminist Journal of Politics (IFJP), Rout ledge Taylor and Francis group, U.K. She also edited Foreign Policy Analysis, which is published by Blackwell, USA. She received the International Visiting Fellowship in the School of Policy Studies, in the University of Bristol, UK. Dr. Pande is a Academic Fellow, University of Buffalo, USA, and International Visiting Scholar, at Maison De Research, Paris. She has been the Project Director of thirty three projects funded by international, national, state and non-governmental organizations. She has also been the National Core Group member of Mahila Samkhya Programme (Women’s Empowerment), Government of India. As part of this programme, she was the Executive Council member of the Mahila Samakhya programme in Uttranchal , Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Bihar. She is a member of the Feminist Jurisprudence Committee, National Commission for Women and Core Advisory Group, and Sensitization and Capacity Building towards Eliminating Child Labor, Government of Andhra Pradesh. She is the Member of Board of Studies in a large number of Universities in India. She has widely traveled in India and abroad to deliver keynote addresses and lectures and present papers in national and international conferences.

Theo van der Weide (Ed.)
Th.P. van der Weide received his Master’s degree in Mathematics at the Technical University Eindhoven, the Netherlands in 1975, and the degree of PhD in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Leiden, the Netherlands in 1980. He is currently full Professor in Information Retrieval and Information Systems (IRIS) in the section Digital Security of the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (ICIS) at Faculty of Science from the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the oldest city in the Netherlands. His main research interests include Information Systems, information retrieval, hypertext, and knowledge based systems. He is involved in the Information Foraging Lab, an interdepartmental research group focusing on the development of models and techniques supporting modern knowledge workers. IFL is a collaboration between researchers from the Institute of Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) from the Faculty of Science and the Language and Speech Unit of the Faculty of Arts, both at Radboud University Nijmegen. He also is involved in an extensive research program with public universities in Uganda, supported by Nuffic. For more information, see uganda.cs.ru.nl. His research activities in this project concentrate on introducing ICT in a developing context (for example, setting up an eHealth infrastructure based on mobile techniques, and employing agent technology in a secure way),using ICT in the educational process (on primary, secondary and tertiary level), and the impact of ICT on society, its culture and policy. His research in information retrieval and information systems is concerned with developing solutions to problems that arise in retrieving documents from modern distributed information systems, such as the World Wide Web. Th.P. van der Weide has much experience on all educational levels. At managerial levels, he has been director of the Nijmegen Teaching Institute for Computing and Information Science, and currently is the coordinator for the Information Science program. He has developed and taught many courses, and currently teaches the following courses: Domain Modeling Storage and Information Retrieval. He is also in charge of a community outreach project concerned with Information and Communication Technology in a different culture, an incubation course, called: GiPHouse International (a course where students learn to do an international ICT project).

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