An Empowerment Approach to Gender Equality in the Information Society — Perspectives from East Asia (original) (raw)

Socioeconomic and political power in the global society today is increasingly defined by control over, access to and use of information. In such a society, 'information' (and products and services related to it) has become a significant tradeable and very profitable good, tipping the scales even further against and negatively impacting the traditionally important comparative economic advantage of countries which own natural and agricultural resources. 1 According to Govindan Parayil (quoted in Roy 2003) from the National University of Singapore, although the increasing returns from informational or digital capitalism are not an anomaly, they have created an instability marked by the most unequal distributions of income and wealth in human history. Just as one can be enriched financially or otherwise when one has access to, control of, and ownership over material resources, one can also be enriched by having 'the right information at the right time and at the right place'. Likewise, one can be impoverished without access to, control of and ownership over these resources. But because of the increasing profitability of informational capitalism, this impact -positive or negative -of enrichment or impoverishment is exponential, 2 and this has serious implications for the 'utopic' information society in terms of communication rights 3 and freedom of Adopting an empowerment framework, this paper reviews both available statistical data and a range of case studies in the East Asian context, to illustrate how the empowerment approach is critical for achieving gender equality in the information society in the region. The paper focuses on the use of ICTs and its implications for women in the areas of work and governance, in particular.

Sign up for access to the world's latest research.

checkGet notified about relevant papers

checkSave papers to use in your research

checkJoin the discussion with peers

checkTrack your impact