Sreela Sarkar, University of Massachusetts

Organizational Partners:

The Datamation Foundation, Delhi, India

This collaborative research project provides a critical examination of an established Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD) initiative designed to empower a minority community of low-income women in the urban periphery of Seelampur, in New Delhi, India. While there has been extensive documentation and empirical research on ICTD projects in India, these studies have overwhelmingly assumed that technology is seen as a neutral instrument to create attitudinal and behavioral change among project participants. In Seelampur, the focus of research and intervention practices of Datamation Foundation and the Delhi state government has been to reach out to urban, working-class Muslim women to encourage them to visit the ICT center to access and use technology.

Our ethnographic study follows Seelampur women from the doorsteps of the ICT center into their everyday lives. The purpose of our research is not to examine political, economic and cultural factors that impede women from crossing the digital divide to meaningfully use technology although we believe that such studies have their significance. Rather, we seek to explore whether access to ICT impacts everyday lived realities for minority women after their participation in the ICTD initiative. Our study draws from Datamation project objectives to focus on three inter-connected areas of inquiry related to impact of ICT among Seelampur women namely class, religion and gender. We hope to unpack concepts of “digital divide” and “access” in the context of existing power relations and practices in a rapidly globalizing but deeply unequal world. This study is relevant in the context of debates about ICT and the gender divide at the World Summit on Information Societies in Tunis in 2005 and contemporary discussions in international policy circles. Our research connects technology and advocacy and could be used to strengthen links between feminist groups, technology- oriented NGOs and ICT based women empowerment initiatives in India and in the global South.

Contact:
Sreela Sarkar
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Communication
University of Massachusetts
240 Hicks Way
Amherst, MA 01003-9278
Email:ssarkar@comm.umass.edu