How to check effectiveness of ICTs for women?

Lenka Simerska is a Regional Co-Coordinator of Gender Evaluation Methodology Project for Central and Eastern Europe. GEM is a guide to integrating a gender analysis into evaluations of initiatives that use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for social change. It provides a means for determining whether ICTs are really improving women’s lives and gender relations as well as promoting positive change at the individual, institutional, community and broader social levels. GEM is not simply an evaluation tool. It can also be used to ensure that gender concerns are integrated into a project planning process. More information on the project can be found on the web site: www.apcwomen.org/gem/index.htm.

Q: Could you tell us how GEM can be used by women’s organizations and what profits it can bring? Why woman’s organizations do need GEM?

Lenka Simerska: The best way to answer your question will be by giving an example. The Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation tested GEM and used it to evaluate effectiveness of ICTs for campaigning among youth. Speaking about this project doesn’t make sense without mentioning the situation and trends in telecommunication in Bulgaria:

According to ITU’s World Telecommunication Development report 2002 Bulgaria is a so-called lower middle income country (second poorest out of 4 groups of world country economies). It is a country with a population of 8.11 million with GDP US$ 1,473 per capita and density of 73 persons per km2. Its teledensity is quite high. Like other countries in transition to a market economy Bulgaria has much higher than expected level of telecommunications development. Networks in these countries were largely constructed during an era in which the nominal GDP per capita was much higher than at present. At present there are 55 telephone subscribers per 100 inhabitants and 85% of households have a telephone. The number of cellular phone users is growing rapidly and now they compose 35% of total telephone subscribers.

Before 1989, when economy and trade was realized in the common artificially constructed market of the socialist countries, Bulgaria used to be the producer and main supplier of electronic and communication equipment for the Soviet bloc. The production has been accompanied by the development of research institutes and specialized technical programs at universities, which provided human resources and technology for plants producing computers, computer parts and other IT devices.

After the fall of the “iron curtain” Bulgaria lost its specialization in ICTs. The main institutes could no longer be supported, the production closed down and thousands of electronic and communication engineers lost their jobs.

The number of girls enrolling in ICT-related subjects in higher education today is not higher than 25 years ago, in fact it is declining, even though there is a quota system for girls – the faculties reserve 40% of places to female applicants who comply with the application requirements. The cause of the problem lies deeper than just in low interest of girls in technical education. A main contributing factor is gender biased socialization. Girls are discouraged from taking technical subjects and a rather traditional division of roles predominates. It is quite difficult to change the gender role set up in a situation of high unemployment and economic decline.

Nevertheless, computer courses have been introduced at secondary schools. Unfortunately the substance of these courses and the curriculum is very often so archaic and non-motivating that pupils are not very much interested, even those whose interest in ICTs is very high outside school (usually boys).

One of the women’s organizations, “Bulgaria Gender Research Foundation (BGRF), decided in 2001 to explore the possibility of using ICTs to promote women’s human rights among the youth and realized the project “Communication for advocacy plan”.

BGRF aims at promoting and facilitating the achievement of a gender balanced society; its goal is to disseminate information and raise awareness about women’s rights and gender issues in Bulgaria. The main issues on which the foundation focuses its activities are eradication of violence against women, fight for social-economic rights of women during the transition and empowerment of women for larger political participation. The goal of the project was to develop a web site in order to disseminate largely the work and ideas dedicated to the eradication of violence against women among young people.

Q: The idea itself was great but how did they construct the web site in order to make it attractive for young people, to get their attention for such a difficult issue as violence against women?

Lenka Simerska: The web site’s central element was a contest for the best poster and essay portraying the issue of violence against women. The kids could submit their own essay or poster and they could also vote on everyone else’s posters and essays displayed on the web site. A user friendly online voting device was available directly on the website. The website was presented to children via their teachers at selected schools (age 13 - 18) in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, and of course a number of kids found it themselves by browsing. The results of the project can be found at www.bgrf.org.

This web site targeted mainly boys, but also had a specific focus on girls, each gender with a specific strategy. With the assumption that boys are more familiar with internet and have better access to it at home, at school, in internet clubs and more easily develop their ICTs confidence within the peer groups, the project hoped to attract boys to the topic of violence. By presenting the theme via internet and by using technical items like the online voting, the project intended to motivate boys to participate, to get to know about the phenomenon of violence, and to develop boys’ understanding of ICTs also as a potential tool for defending human rights. In the case of girls, there was one additional aim – to motivate them to use ICTs and to strip the myth that ICTs are only for male use by showing that internet work can be done by women, for women and on women’s topics. The overall aim for both was to raise their interest in the issues of violence against women via using the internet as a tool of attraction and means to reach the youngest generation.

Q: The idea of the project is really excellent but could you please more clearly situate the GEM into that? Why did BGRF decide to use this method? What benefits did it bring them? Why did they need GEM?

Lenka Simerska: The project was very successful and got numerous excellent feedbacks from the kids themselves, as well as from teachers and parents. There were winners chosen in both categories, essay and poster, by the online voting. Two posters were printed and used in the campaign of 16 days of activism against violence against women.

The only problem that BGRF faced when trying to judge the success of the project objectively was that there was no data to measure the real outreach of the web site among the teenagers and the public in general. Since there is no data about internet use of different social and age groups in Bulgaria, BGRF decided to apply GEM on the project and evaluate the outreach in a different way.

Q: So what were the main goals of the GEM evaluation?

Lenka Simerska: The first and foremost goal of the GEM evaluation was to assess the effectiveness and possibility of using a web site for campaigning among the youth (high school teenagers), and to evaluate the influence of the use of ICTs on the participation of teenagers to the initiatives of NGOs. The specific gender goal of the evaluation was to get to know how participation differs between girls and boys. To achieve this evaluation goal more information was needed about how ICTs, internet in particular, is being viewed and used among this age group of youth attending schools in the capital Sofia. Therefore a questionnaire was used as the initial method of acquiring data about internet use.

The evaluation had also other particular goals that were achieved by using different other methods like interviewing school teachers and educators or reviewing the school curricula and gender aspects of the school system, such as:
 Evaluation of the web site as such – how its existence helped the 16 Days of Activism Campaign; how its users evaluate its design, contents and different technical devices, especially the online voting; how different people got to the website and what were their reasons; if interactivity of the web site (possibility to post opinions) increases the motivation to participate in the campaign; what is the effectiveness of the web forum, etc.
 Evaluation of equality of boys and girls in the access and use of ICTs – what is the attitude of girls and boys towards ICTs and how it is constructed; what is the level of school ICTs education and what role it plays in creating opportunities and motivating girls and boys to explore ICTs.
 The potential of such internet based projects to increase gender balance in use and perception of ICTs among young generation.

We have to underline that the evaluation is still ongoing so what we have at the moment are only the preliminary results which let us to withdraw some conclusions.

Q: Could you give us some more detailed information about the form of the evaluation and its specificity?

Lenka Simerska: The initial method of acquiring data on how internet is being used among teenage girls and boys was a questionnaire. 300 questionnaires were distributed among teenagers at schools where the project was earlier introduced. The responses received were 190. The returnability was lowered because some of the students who participated, already finished the school. Among the respondents 109 were boys and 81 girls. Although it could seem already an indication for the interest and involvement, in fact it is not, as among the participants to the program there was one technical school attended 95% by boys.

Q: What were the main findings of this small preliminary poll?

Lenka Simerska: This quite trivial questionnaire survey among teenagers showed basic gender differences in perception and use of internet. The most affordable and preferred place to access internet are internet clubs. At the same time, clubs are boy’s social places and boys spend their pocket money there. Boys are interested in games, software, hardware and web design as well – girls rather stay at the home computer and check their e-mails or look for some specific information needed for school. Since both girls and boys have interests in modern technologies, we can assume that also girls would explore it much more if the environment was more open and inviting for them. If they receive more motivating signals, perhaps in form of women’s NGOs campaigns or as women role models who use internet in advanced ways, girls would probably surprise us by their increased interest in ICTs. (To obtain more detailed information about the findings of this survey please do contact BGRF).

Q: What was the positive input of GEM evaluation?

Lenka Simerska: The survey showed that internet has the potential to become an effective tool to attract young people to be thinking about social issues such as violence against women and to participate in campaigns. Internet is not very much promoted at schools but the interest is there and young people, especially boys, find other ways to access it and learn about it. Internet is probably more effective tool to reach younger generation. However, to validate this assumption, data about use among different age groups would be necessary.

Also it is doubtful to state that girls surpass their mothers in using ICTs. As we know, in Bulgaria, like in most countries of the former Soviet block, women have been present in the labor market for four generations. It was however imposed upon them by the communist propaganda rather than introduced out of the desire of women themselves or result of the leverage of women’s movement (like in most western economies). Women have penetrated all strata of economy and education fields (however they remained minority or even rarity in some), technical ones included. It is likely that in many cases of women working in technical spheres or using any sort of technology for their work, the continuity of their technical advancement in ICTs has been interrupted by political and economical changes after 1989. At the time the boom of ICTs started globally, new ways of communication spread out with the internet. Women simply could not keep up with this fast changeover given the conditions that they had throughout the 90s, especially those who had to work in low-skilled jobs not suitable for their qualification and education. But taking into account their past work experience, they certainly hold the potential to counterbalance the gap, if suitable conditions are provided.

Nevertheless, Bulgaria has a good ICTs potential per se, taking into account its teledensity, the experience and skills prevailing from the era of before ’89, and its progressive youth. As for the gender gap and the potential of girls to exploit ICTs equally with boys, it is highly recommended that women’s NGOs acquire information and knowledge on ICTs in order to improve their own work, reach the public and motivate girls to “get into the play”. Many women’s NGOs still fear technology and prefer to use old ways of communication and production of information.

Lastly, the survey implies a recommendation for schools. The project “Communication for Advocacy Plan” itself as well as its evaluation according to GEM showed that schools need to become much more proactive in delivering the modern ways of using ICTs to its students, while not using gender biased methods of teaching as well as the curriculum contents. Young people need guidance that would further develop their personal interest and invention. That is probably not happening while aimlessly playing games in an internet club or haphazardly chatting online with a friend from home.

Q: Thank you Lenka for the interview and I hope that soon there will be more and more positive case studies such as the one you told us about.

The final GEM evaluation report can be found at www.apcwomen.org/gem in the section for Central and Eastern European GEM testers.