Technology and Women's Empowerment

Ewa Lechman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367493721
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000438086
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Economics

The near-ubiquitous spread of ICT offers unprecedented opportunities for social and economic agents, reshapes social and economic structures and drives the emergence of socioeconomic networks. This book contributes to the growing body of literature and present state of knowledge, offering the reader broad evidence on how new information and communication technologies impact women's economic and social empowerment and hence have an impact on overall welfare creation. More specifically, it concentrates on demonstrating how ICT may become "empowering technologies" through their implementation. The book is designed to provide deep insight into the theoretical and empirical evidence on ICT as a significant driver of women`s social and economic development.

Special focus is given to examining the following broad topics: channels of ICT impact on women's development; the role of ICT in enhancing women's active participation in formal labor markets; examples of how ICT encourages education, skills development, institutions development et alia, and thus contributes to women's social and economic empowerment, as well as case-based evidence on ICT's role in fostering women's equality.

The primary audience for the book will be scholars and academic professionals from a wide variety of disciplines but mainly those who are concerned with addressing the issues of economic development and growth, social development, the role of technology progress in the context of broadly defined socioeconomic progress.

Chapters 1 and 3 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

1 Digital technologies and women’s empowerment – casting the bridges

Ewa Lechman and Piotr Paradowski

DOI: 10.4324/9781003045946-1

1.1 Introduction

Societies and economies are not digitally neutral. Digital technologies are widely acknowledged as the key drivers for knowledge and information acquiring, labor and capital productivity, social, political, and economic empowerment (Graham, 2019). Digital technologies, due to the strong network effects (Katz and Shapiro, 1985) that they generate, enable the emergence of various networks reshaping the ways in which businesses are run, trading and consumption patterns, economic and social behaviors, and social norms and attitudes (Graham & Dutton, 2019). Tracing and understanding existing relationships between society-wide adoption and usage of digital technologies and economic development deserves special attention for a variety of reasons: not only to claim that it deepens our knowledge on how economies work but to state that a policy perspective that shapes institutional and economic environment is of seminal importance in this case (Stiroh, 2002; Gilbert, 2020).

Theoretical and empirical academic contributions highlight different positive effects that information and communication technologies may generate, improving the well-being of individuals and whole societies by offering them new opportunities in education and skills improvements, setting up new businesses, leaving behind the undeclared economy sector and achieving a relatively stable source of income. Arising from the gradually increasing use of information and communication technology (ICT) worldwide, a massive amount of literature documents both conceptual frameworks and empirical evidence regarding ICT’s impact on social and economic development: starting from the contribution of work by Abramowitz (1986), Dosi et al. (1988), Freeman and Soete (1990), Fagerberg (1994 and 1995), Fagerberg et al. (1994) to more recent evidence like, for instance, work by Bilan et al. (2019), Loh and Chib (2019), Tchamyou et al. (2019), Adam (2020), Ali et al. (2020), Nair et al. (2020), or Vu et al. (2020).

Empirical research tracing the sensitivity of societies and economies to the introduction of digital technologies discusses a variety of channels of impact and interrelations between the two. Earlier studies concentrated predominantly on creating network societies and economies (Shapiro & Varian, 1998; Castells, 2000, 2011; Johansson, 2012; Van Dijk, 2020), information societies (Mossberge et al., 2007; Beniger, 2009; Lyon, 2013; Buckland, 2017; Martin, 2017) where structural changes are driven by strong network externalities (Katz & Shapiro, 1985, 1986) and unlimited access to all types of information and knowledge, usually at negligible marginal cost. Other studies emphasized the purely technical side of technological progress that changes the structure of production and, consequently, the consumption side (Joyce et al., 2019). The effects of technological progress on both the supply and the demand sides of the economy are rather direct and immediate, while changes in ways of doing business and trading patterns (Rodríguez-Crespo and Martínez-Zarzoso, 2019), education and skills (Livingstone, 2012), labor markets and the labor force (Falk and Biagi, 2017), people’s economic engagement, or – more broadly – productivity shifts or poverty alleviation, seem to be more hidden, indirect, and demonstrated in the long run. Undeniably, the full potential of digital technologies can be easily unleashed when deploying them as economic development accelerators in the least-developed countries (Cheng et al., 2020) permanently lacking financial resources, good infrastructure, free and easily accessed educational and healthcare systems, and sound government (Kozma & Vota, 2014; Kaur et al., 2017). Unless a breakthrough like the explosion of ICT occurs, they will probably remain in poverty traps, being unable to take off on the development path (Hanafizadeh et al., 2019).

1.2 Digital technologies adoption and usage: global snapshot

According to ITU estimates (ITU, 2019), in 2019 slightly above 4 billion people worldwide were using the Internet, which accounts for almost 54% of the global population. In regard to mobile cellular telephony, in 2019 more than 108% of the world’s population was using this type of technological tool, while 83% of individuals were using active mobile broadband networks. Figure 1.1 demonstrates ICT core indicator diffusion trajectories between 1984 and 2019 for mobile cellular telephony, between 1999 to 2019 for Internet users, and between 2007 and 2019 for active mobile broadband, and year-to-year rates of growth of the respective indicators. Additionally, Table 1.1 summarizes logistic growth estimates for examined ICT variables that report the in-time dynamics of the diffusion process. Starting from the mid-1980s we may observe the steady growth of the adoption of mobile telephony worldwide. The diffusion path between 1984 and 2000 is relatively flat, reporting slow increases in mobile telephony adoption in this period; however, since 2000 we observe that the curve takes off as annual growth rates speed up in the forthcoming years (see figure reporting year-to-year growth rates – between 2000 and 2010 the annual rates of growth range from 3% per annum to even 9% per annum, and then slow down). The results of logistic growth estimates (see Table 1.1) show that, during the examined period, the intrinsic growth rate for MCS was 31% per year (world average), which allowed it to pass from a 10% to 90% level of world average saturation in just 14.4 years, with the half-way point being reached by the year 2007.

Figure 1.1 ICT core indicators diffusion trajectories and year-to-year rates of diffusion (bell curves). World (total). Period 1984–2019. Source: authors’ elaboration. Note: Internet users and Mobile cellular telephony- time series: 1980–2019; active mobile broadband subscriptions - time series: 2007–2019; 3-parameter logistic growth model applied.

Table 1.1 ICT core indicators logistic growth estimates.¹ World (total). Period 1984–2019

Region and time period	κ [per 100 inhab.]	Tm [year]	α [% per year]	Δt [# of years]	r-sq.	Root MSE	Res. Dev.	# obs.
MCS_world_1984–2019	109.5 [0.96]	2007.5 [0.08]	0.31 [0.00]	14.4	0.99	1.02	100.8	36
IU_world_1990–2019	63.6 [2.35]	2011.1 [0.43]	0.19 [0.00]	22.5	0.99	1.17	85.4	28
AMB_world_2007–2019	120.9 [10.3]	2016.8 [0.54]	0.32 [0.01]	13.7	0.99	1.25	39.4	13
Source: authors’ estimates. Note: estimation method – NLS. In parenthesis (robust SE). MCS – mobile cellular subscriptions; IU – Internet users; AMB – active mobile broadband subscriptions.

According to logistic growth estimates (compare Table 1.1) the upper ceiling for MCS diffusion is at about 110 per 100 inhabitants, and it seems, on average, the world population has reached this level of ICT saturation. Still, these results differ by world regions if we discriminate between developed countries, developing countries, and least-developed countries (LDCs).² Figure A in the Appendix draws MCS diffusion curves for the respective regions for the period 2005–2019.³ Needless to state that the MCS saturation results are highest in developed countries – in 2019 saturation reached almost 130 per 100 inhabitants, while in LDCs it was only 75 per 100 inhabitants. Interestingly, regardless of the country group, annual growth rates (see also Figure A in the Appendix), as well as the in-time shape of the MCS development path, do not differ significantly, which may speak in support of the hypothesis that ICT diffusion process is strongly endogenously driven by emerging network externalities (Katz & Shapiro, 1986; Lechman, 2015; Aguilar et al., 2020; Hoernig & Monteiro, 2020). Still, what shall be noted, according to the ICT statistics cited, is that even the most economically deprived countries, with the lowest gross per capita income, may benefit from the global spread of digital technologies. There is abundant empirical literature reporting the massive spread and increasingly fast adoption of ICT in economically poor countries, despite the fact that neither its diffusion determinants nor its effects are well recognized. See, for instance, the most recent research by Cheng et al. (2020) modeling ICT effects for financial and economic development in MENA economies; Maneejuk and Yamaka (2020) examining ICT impact on economic growth, through the channels of fixed and mobile telephony as well as R&D; Çetin et al. (2020) tracing the impact of digital te...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• A few words from the editor
• 1 Digital technologies and women’s empowerment – casting the bridges
• 2 Mobile phone technologies as an opportunity for women’s financial inclusion: What does the evidence say?
• 3 Women empowering themselves to fit into ICT
• 4 The role of social technologies in women’s empowerment perception: An international comparison
• 5 A multidimensional analysis of the digital gender gap in European Union Member States
• 6 ICT usage at work as a way to reduce the gender earnings gap among European entrepreneurs
• 7 Self-employment of women: an opportunity or the last resort?
• 8 ICT and women’s careers: Using grassroots ICT to expand women’s participation in nontraditional careers
• 9 Gender and support: Polish women at the beginning of their professional career in IT
• 10 ICTs for women’s poverty alleviation: What does the theory and the practice tell us?
• 11 “When people come to me for suggestions, I feel like an expert”: Empowering women through smartphones in rural Bangladesh
• 12 Female unemployment in an emerging economy: A study of online social support as a coping strategy
• 13 ICT and women’s economic empowerment: A cross-country analysis through investigating the impact of ICT on women’s financial inclusion
• Index