Summary of the discussion
Women Lead ICT based Enterprises

This was the first discussion of a series we are hoping to have as part of the GK3 Online Interactions platform. Our discussion started with three questions:

- Are micro, small and medium enterprises economic models that actually translate into benefits to local communities? What are the conditions for entrepreneurial initiatives to spread their benefits?

- Self employment does not eliminate the fact that most women work double shifts and take most of the load of domestic work and family responsibilities. How do we address this and other challenges of women entrepreneurs in developing countries?

- What capacities are needed to strengthen women lead medium, small and even microenterprises, and what strategies have proved successful to deliver these capacities?

- Are there experiences in public policy, government support and international cooperation for the support of this specific sector?

Although the list didn't have a high volume of messages, many interesting experiences and lessons learned can be extracted from what was submitted to the list.

In terms of Micro, Small and Medium enterprises as a model that benefits communities:

Margarita Salas, Costa Rica, said:

- It is very related to local conditions.
- When SME's that are owned by their workers have a greater chance of spreading wealth than those who are the property of one or two people.
- Are SMEs really owned by people from the community or has a specific commitment to the geographical community or is it because it is looking for cheaper workforce?

Lady Murrugarra said:
- it is very important for the community depending if the area is urban or rural. It can create new communities and change the culture of technology.
- They can exist in a variety of areas of technology

About the double role of women in domestic and workforce environments.

Margarita Salas, from Costa Rica, said:

- The problem that goes beyond any particular branch or type of employment.
- All work, domestic or not, should be paid or at least economically recognized and this will not happen if women continue to carry out double-shifts for free.
- Women need to empower themselves and refuse to continue assuming all this unpaid work and men need to recognize and assume their responsibility in the so called domestic work as well as their family responsabilities.
-I wonder...have the economically strong countries been able to solve this issue? Is this really a challenge only for the women entrepreneurs of the developing countries??

Lady Murrugarra said:

- Technical women's talents can be developed to lead on more competitive products and to find solutions to problems that impact our lives, nations and the world.

On the capacities that are needed to strengthen women enterprises.

Lady Murrugarra said:

- Women use their leadership skills to influence the ways in which technology is designed and implemented, focusing on significant practical solutions to problems that trouble them - energy, food, clean water, health, literacy, environment—and a host of other issues confronting the world.
- As products and services result from their innovations and permeate the global market, the capabilities of technical women are demonstrated, and new generations of women follow in their footsteps, in a profession that grows increasingly more supportive of women.

Julia Hanan said.

I think to many people, the ICT needs and capacity of disadvantaged women in urban areas are still something that might never have come across their mind. The fact that these women physically live in vicinity to the infrastructure and other resources does not necessarily mean that they have access to it and benefit from it. In fact many of them are left behind in the gray area and suffer from even stronger prejudice, since they are a group of 'homemakers' after all, undereducated and poor, and their isolation is usually taken for granted.

About the general topic, a few issues were raised

Richard Heeks said:

One of the concerns I've had is the focus on some of the women's ICT enterprise projects I've seen. The focus, it seems to me, is on "women" and not on "gender". The logic seems to be it is enough to just target some resources at women, without really looking at their relations with men, and at the way men still hold the power in government, firms and the household.

Julia Hanan said:

eHomemakers has been training disadvantaged women in urban Kuala Lumpur region in ICT skills so that they can earn income from home by teleworking. Most of them have reasons to be impoverished 'homemakers' - single mom, disabled or chronically ill, or have children or elderly dependents who need special care - and leaving home to work is not an option to them. Even though they are so eager to work and have learnt basic skills required for teleworking positions, finding jobs for them was always a very difficult task, since people usually don't believe that a group of marginalized women can actually offer something valuable to them - especially using IT. We turned to many businesses with CSR programs and requested their help in finding teleworking positions for our ladies, but in most cases what we hear back is "That's very interesting. But can they do something else, like cleaning?", reflecting the high wall of prejudice we are facing.

Nasir Sobri said:

-People are talking so much about bringing ICT to the masses, but instead of offering what the masses really want, they only present ICT as temporal entertainment and social usage which later became a social distraction to these group of people.
- As a country manager for a glocal business project that was started by Dr Brouwer from Belgium (yes, commercial, but we don't plan to turn profit for at least two years from today) which has recently rolled out to over 50 countries in parallel, I believe that we are doing exactly what Dr Richard Heeks is suggesting -- present the new ways as
a form of social entrepreneurship for these women and the poor, instead of constricting our ICT introduction to them as a mean to complement only their traditional work. In fact, we took the concept a step higher by pushing the concept of crowdsourcing instead of insourcing (from corporations or government agencies). I've been blogging a lot about it for the past couple months, and a related post includes this one:
http://mypajamanation.blogspot.com/2007/06/ready-for-pajama-enterprise.h...

- I think that we should not constrict the goal of establishing ICT-based work culture among just a specific gender or group of people -- women and the disabled workers
in this case. The whole population in developing countries is still far behind in maximizing ICT for self-employment. Take an example of blogging, infopreneuring, online retailing etc. It's just a matter if a large group of people of a specific region, even if they have to be men initially take up the online-driven work culture, women will
naturally tag along because they make up the fast-growing online users -- there are 3 to 2 female students compared to male students in higher learning institutions today in Malaysia, at least! ICT simply is the great equalizer to everyone not minding their gender and physical ability. The major energy should be devoted to simply bring
the technology and culture to EVERYONE in the targeted region, not spending too much time on particular groups. If women would still be a group of concern, then just focus on raising the bar that each higher learning institutes should reach. For instance, internet connectivity in many Malaysian universities and colleges ARE VERY
POOR, even after being accorded the much-hyped Multimedia Super Corridor-status.

On this discussion, the moderator issued a request to participants to suggest improvements on the process of discussion and methodology of the online list. To that, participants gave their inputs.

Baudouin Schome said:

- It would be positive to give good practices examples from some communities
where this experience gives a best result.

Julia Hanan said:

- The materials were just so great; a lot of food for thought, so for me it took a while to digest them.

Nasir Sobri said:

- insufficient promotion of this GKP initiative itself to the general public, or lack of effective strategy to push this agendas to the more of the right people or entities.
- using a less user-friendly subscription system (compared to the more
friendlier ones like those by yahoo or google)
-a web-based commenting system (a social object of web 2.0) with a push notification system would work much better than this less interactive email system.

Again thank you everyone for your postings. We are looking into the future topics and reviewing the methodology, having your suggestions in mind. I invite you to remain in the list! Our next topic will be announced soon.

I also invite you to joint the GK3 Gender list, where a more specific discussion will be moderated by the GK3 Gender committee. http://lists.gk3onlineinteractions.net/listinfo.cgi/gk3gender-gk3onlinei...