generalspeaking

Losing Control Of Women

Afghanistan is in a dead heat with countries like Sudan, Somalia and Congo for representing as the worst place on Earth for women. Where women have few legal rights and little recourse to the law, where violence is a commonplace experience, where rape is endemic, and women's human rights constantly abridged. And where women are most commonly seen in public discreetly hidden within the darkly enveloping folds of full burqas.

Communication land lines in these Third-World countries are notoriously bad, or intermittently available, or absent. What is available to people living in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe is cellphones. If women can convince their menfolk that for any number of convenient reasons of communication they should be permitted to have their own personal cellphones, they become partially socially liberated.

It is estimated that in the 149 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, that women in those countries are 21% less likely than a man to have a handset at their disposal. Statistics released by the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women: "The disparity is greater, and the widest is in South Asia, which includes Afghanistan, India and Nepal. There, a woman is 37% less likely to be a wireless customer."

Telecommunications companies are not focused on providing women from Third World countries with cellphones out of the goodness of their corporate hearts; they are invested in it for financial gain. But their financial gain quite clearly represents a clear form of social liberation for women who can convince their husbands or their fathers that for safety and communication reasons cellphone use makes good sense.

In Afghanistan the country's largest wireless provider has run a fairly successful advertising campaign; successful in urban areas, doubtless making little inroads in provincial rural areas where tradition is far more deeply engrained and women are kept isolated. Still, after the advertisements began to appear portraying men as bearers of cellphone gifts as necessary tools, female customers grew to 23% from 18%.

And in Qatar where women are socially forbidden to interact with strangers of the opposite gender, woman are able to sign up for service without having to enter stores to enlist themselves. An all-female sales force discreetly performs the sign-up function in private living rooms and kitchens, furnishing all paperwork required to complete such transactions.

In Kenya, 34% of women use cellphones and many use them for business purposes. The businesses modest enough in nature; selling fruit and vegetables by roadside stalls, and banking earnings directly with a nearby agent, to forestall the common incidences of being robbed, while in possession of cash earned. Women pay utility bills, school fees, and transfer funds to distant family members.

"In the Afghan woman's mind, mobile phone technology helps her to keep in touch with friends and can help her be entrepreneurial. In the Afghan man's mind, the technology means he loses control of the woman."

In India, a text message system provides an invaluable transfer of information to women to inform them when engineers turn on communal taps relied upon for water. This kind of communication saves time for the poor, informing them when services are available, so they have little occasion to miss opportunities that benefit them and their families.

In Cairo, volunteers began HarassMap where text and Twitter messages from women warn where sexual harassment occurs - anything from irritating catcalls, to ogling, and on to rape - is posted on a map of the city, enabling women to avoid those areas. It doesn't solve the dilemma of violation of their human rights, something only society through the application of the law can do, but it does provide women with a tool to help protect themselves.

For some women, however, ownership of a cellphone has become a bone of contention between them and their husbands, who resent the very thought of anything approximating independence for their wives. Women using cellphones to maintain contact with their relatives living elsewhere reluctantly give up their use of the handsets when they are threatened by their husbands with divorce.

Labels: Afghanistan, Africa, Communication, Egypt

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, August 04, 2011