Literacy of women in Europe and Middle East

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Background of the studies
Rationale of the research
Objective of the study
Scope of the study
Structure of the dissertation
Conclusion
References

Introduction

This dissertation revolves around the issues based on the literacy of women in Europe and Middle East and the way advanced technology has contributed to this factor. Womens leadership and women in the telecommunication businesses are some of the points that need to be put into consideration and womens contribution to the economic opportunities that may affect each and every one of us in one way or another.

There is the need to fully understand women, gender and the telecommunication sector. Economy growth made by women may never be noticed or appreciated unless there are policies put into place for all mainstreaming efforts that take gender into consideration. Some of the factors that mainly affect the ratio of women to men are as follows:

Background of the studies

Illiteracy has always acted as a hindrance to success for women; it is estimated that two thirds of the worlds illiterate are women. According to statistics, womens place has always been in the kitchen as considered by many cultures, therefore, denying an access to proper or formal education for women (Christina & De Bellaigue, 2007). Women need the same level of education as men for a country to proper develop.

However, some of the contents and designs used on the internet or the advanced technologies in telecommunication today have not been made easy for some women (Huyer & Sophia, 2005).

These technologies may not be in the language that women and even men may understand. If this issue could be addressed, the women could largely fill the demand for skilled labor for economic growth as well as the workforce.

Rationale of the research

When it comes to leadership, women have the least percentage in both the developing and the developed communities. This has a major if not significant impact on the economic growth.

Statistics show that companies with more women in their boards outperformed companies with the least by 53 percent. In most cases you will find women in the lowest paid and least secure jobs because the men have dominated the higher paid jobs in the telecommunication management fields (Jolly et al, 2004).

Developing countries may find their performance outcome different from other companies hence they should set standards and integrate women into the top offices but not necessarily just because they are women but because they cannot afford to ignore their best and brightest minds that also include women.

It is very unfortunate that even today, the potential of women continues to be underestimated or underutilized in ICT structures when making some important decisions.

Objective of the study

All in all, failure of employing skilled women is a loss generating to economic impacts that would lead to loss of millions of dollars from resources that could have better served the needs of organizations. Women are disadvantaged because they have multiple roles in the community as well as the cultural bias that values mens education more than that of women (Margolis & Allan, 2002).

Scope of the study

In telecommunication developments, it was a woman who developed the compiler and identified the first computer bug and came up with the first computer programs. However, there is a growing awareness of womens ability in expanding their work across and all over the world in terms of use of ICTs.

Indeed, womens presence and full participation in terms of knowledge and skills in a society are necessary for development to take place (Sweetman, 2000). And if that does not happen, the development process will be slowed down and would have a very negative impact on the society.

Studies have shown that women are often not valued and mostly those who work with telecommunication companies are rarely promoted to managerial positions.

One of the many factors that determine the impact of IT on womens working lives is gender. Ethnicity, age, religion and class can also play a very big role in defining womens work position. The changes and improvement on technology also affect the quantity and quality of womens workforce.

Womens employment benefits from the advanced technologies, they are associated with health, environment and other costs, display unit hazards and repetitive strain injuries (International Telecommunication Union, 2007).

Women benefit mostly when their skills are upgraded through a continuous learning process. When in training, there are things to be accounted for, such as religion, age, class and ethnicity.

Women exchanging experiences have bore fruits both internationally and nationally. Rarely would one find women in decision making areas since women are predominantly only placed in the blue-collar jobs that are precisely vulnerable (World Bank, 2004).

The opportunities and development that women could bring would never be noticed unless policies and efforts are made to take gender considerations into account. Not only women, but also men need to be present when discussing and researching interaction of gender in the telecommunication field. Some companies fail to take note of opinions that arise from studies that include gender as a discipline.

Policy makers should allow debate on issues and arrive at conclusions and perspective recommendations. A solution to this is that policy makers should ensure that they talk to the gender experts, business developers, practitioners and educators that work daily with the population as well as women in general.

There are persistent gender inequalities in men and women due to socio-cultural normality when it comes to womens access to telecommunications. Women should be engaged in discussions, implementations, governance and also in benefiting from revenues, profits and cost sharing.

All organizations must work with both women and stakeholders to ensure that womens opportunities to utilize technologies are not inhibited by culture, seclusion and restrictions on mobility or the unequal division of labor (Spertus, 1991).

A research has been made showing that men and women approach technology differently and has been linked to the difference between men and womens interest in technology to that of toys and tools. It is said that men like to play with technology but women liked to use technology as a tool to achieve a goal which in turn creates a broader implication for education.

This understanding of the nature of men to women and how each approaches technology, must also be measured with an understanding of the countries in historical, political, cultural and economic contexts.

It has been proven that womens businesses are more successful if only project managers appreciated the uniqueness of the factors that women contribute to business development and need in terms of support and services (Delmon, 2010).

The value that women bring to the business development would be lost if the traditional patterns of entrepreneurship and business development are utilized without thought or industry and its culture.

There will always be women who successfully fit the traditional male professions, but this speaks more for the women themselves and the broad diversity they represent. The current changes in the economic, social and political climate in different countries are important because they influence entrepreneurial ambitions in specific directions at different points in time.

Telecommunications may give women an opportunity to be agents of their own development because they are not waiting for access to the ICTs, but are using the ICTs when they are available to get around the constraints that they face in politics, society or even in the economy.

Many women know the importance of information and the power that these technologies hold when it comes to breaking systematic discrimination and gender violence in the workplace. They also see and take note of the new opportunities that ICTs provide for their personal business development and growth.

Like men, women are not waiting for policy making to bridge the digital divide but rather taking action as their own agents of their opportunities by using conventional ICTs such as radio to access information sources and communication processes to achieve their development goals, for their communities and work place.

Structure of the dissertation

The ability for women to work from home and improvement of employment opportunities for women in the IT sector could help in contributing to womens economic opportunities. The increased ability of informal sector for women is supposed to be shifted to the formal sector and improve global market access for the craftswomen through e-commerce.

There is a need for transformation of traditional gender roles and improved access of women, especially rural women, to distance learning and distance working programs hence improving ability for the sharing of experiences among the womens organizations concerned with the economic well being of women in the informal sector and the increase of ability to avoid gender bias by having a gender-opaque medium (Rosser et al, 2005).

Women who have families to take care of are rare in the telecommunication departments but as long as there are fewer women with children in these services, there will be no pressure to change the organization of the employees. Nevertheless, the skill shortage is not the only explanatory factor and reason that the proposed job definitions limit the number of potential candidates.

The world of connected dynamic young people is not open to candidates relatively aged with children and even more if they happened to be mostly women. Women would be more efficient than men to develop trust relation in work relations which in turn constitutes a potential advantage in nomadic careers.

Another possible advantage for women would be their greater experience with discontinuities, mainly due to family events while the professional trajectories of men are rather linear. This experience gives women psychological and social resources to face nomadic careers. As women are frequent providers of the second wage in a household, they would be freer to explore into any new professional trajectories of their choice.

The United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development took note of the growing influence of ICTs in development and the importance of womens participation in discussions regarding to its integration globally. They concluded by establishing a Gender Working Group to address the significant gender issues from access to control.

The United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, the International Telecommunication Union and the UN ICT Task force Secretariat released a report in 2002 that focused on ICTs as a tool to advance and empower women.

When the world summit on the Information Society was established, a gender caucus was created to ensure that women were offered a position at the table and were allowed to air their views and opinions. The commission on the status of women during the 47^th session in 2003 arrived to an agreement that upon building the report, it urged the leaders to integrate gender perspectives in every aspect of the summit.

The same level of education as men possess are not enough to guarantee a womans career in informatics. Other requirements are expected from women and these requirements are linked to their natural social aptitudes that place them systematically in support activities.

If they do not do so, they are perceived as not playing their part, but at the same time these non-technical qualifications are neither recognized nor remunerated, because they are regarded as being natural. On the other hand, their male colleagues present their possible relational aptitudes like additional competences which are profitable for their career (Parks & Yuanzhe, 2003).

Women miss contextual and cultural information that is necessary to understand how communication runs in the company and they are underestimated when regarding to the social and cultural aspects including their own vision of informative culture.

Women do not have as many opportunities as men to give their personal definition of professional situations or to present their personal analysis that are often kept away from strategic decisions.

Cultural factors reinforce the bias already revealed in education training and working conditions. At the beginning, the ICTs have been associated with a male image made of power, fighting strategies, capacity of control and domination and potential of destruction robots.

In the professional culture of many programmers, one may be passionately engaged in the development and the test of their algorithms, working during the night and day to find the least bug, speaking in jargons and ignoring all that is not technical. (Europa Press Releases, 2008).

Conclusion

As we have seen before, in order to improve the company recruitment practices addressing women, public institutions should invest in awareness campaigns showing the variety of contents of ICT professionals.

References

Christina, H. and De Bellaigue, P., 2007. Educating Women Schooling and Identity in England and France. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Delmon, 2010. Telecommunication. Delmonitl.com, Web.

Europa Press Releases, 2008. Women wanted in Europes ICT industry. Web.

Huyer, T and Sophia, L., 2005. Women, ICT and the Information Society: Global Perspectives and Initiatives. Baltimore, CA: Sage.

International Telecommunication Union. 2007. Gender Mainstreaming Activities. Web.

Jolly, K. Lata, N. and Susie, H., 2004. Gender and ICTs Supporting Resources Collection. Bridge: University of Sussex.

Margolis, J. and Allan, F., 2002.Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Parks, T. and Yuanzhe, C., 2003. The next Stage of the Chinese Telecom Market, Parks Associates. China: Berkshire Press.

Rosser, A. and Sue, V., 2005. Women and ICT: Global Issues and Action. Association for Computing Machinery, Baltimore, CA: Sage.

Spertus, E., 1991. Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists? People.Mills.edu Web.

Sweetman, C., 2000. Gender and technology. New York: McGraw Hill.

World Bank, 2004. MENA development report Gender and development in the Middle East and North Africa. World Bank. Web.

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