Enterprising Women, Enterprising States, and Efforts to Overcome the Gendered Digital Divide in India

• In Event: The Digital Divide: Worldwide Challenges for Communication Across the Life Span in the Digital Age

Abstract

This paper compares information and communication technology for development (ICTD) approaches and practices of the Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Karnataka (AWAKE) in the state of Karnataka, located in the neo-liberal bastion of Bengaluru, India, with the various programs of the Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM), located in the historically left-leaning (Communist) state of Kerala, India. Although there are notable differences in the circumstances under which ICT training takes place at AWAKE and the various initiatives and associations in Kerala, the discourses of women’s empowerment, animated through neo-liberal orientations, and the intention to remedy inequalities and impact these women’s life course were common to both locations. This paper addresses how approaches to women subjects of top-down public-private partnership schemes require the existence and cooperation of women’s workers associations in India to provide a pool of trainees for gender and ICTD initiatives who eventually are expected to contribute to the national economy as entrepreneurial individuals. A key question is whether such programs benefit women’s enterprise and/or enterprising states.

Author

• Lisa M. McLaughlin, Miami U - Ohio