Technology Empowering Women of India
Abstract
This study is an attempt to determine major impact of technology on women’s empowerment in present era. To determine the impact of technology, it is important to know the awareness level and the adoption rate of technology among Indian women. This study will also help in finding out various problems/challenges faced
by women and new insights gained by women while using technology. This will also support Indian government in making favourable policies and innovative schemes for women to provide more technology driven power. The structured questionnaire is designed and circulated to 120 women of semi urban areas of
Udaipur district, Rajasthan, based on convenience sampling. 83% of the total questionnaire distributed are found complete for research purpose. Data analysis reveals that after technology in any form it is mostly used by educated women who are between the age of 25–50, and are house makers. The majority of women have
purchased new devices such as smartphones, desktop computer/laptop and tablets for different reasons for doing work from home, entertainment, travel, learning, trading, etc. It is visible from the study that the majority of women have no or insufficient knowledge about ethical guidelines/code of ethics regarding cyber
security. Unfortunately, women restrict themselves to use technology because of severe technical issues, lack of privacy, gender discrimination and digital divide. Other reasons such as domestic issues, overburden of responsibility, low literacy rates, non-participation in decision making, etc., are few other reasons behind
a lower adoption of technology by women. These factors are responsible for smaller interaction of women with the technology and thereby creating stumbling block in empowering women digitally. Strong support of family members, government, policy maker and educational institutions can encourage women empowerment. There is an urge to devise and implement various awareness e-training and support programs for women all over the nation. Strengthening norms for cyber security will add more power and innovation to technology use. Economic and psychological impact of Demonetisation and pandemic COVID-19 have brought tremendous changes to the lives of common man. The new prefix “e” to each and
every word has new meaning “empowering entire earth electronically”. Hence, empowering women has become the top priority of each and every nation.
Keywords
Digital Divide; Women Empowerment; technology change; Digital Inclusion of Women; Training; cyber security and ethics; Nari Shakti
References
Bhatnagar, H. & Rao, N. S. (2014). Internet banking with special reference to females. Saaransh RKG Journal of Management, 4 (1), 0975–4601.
Bhattacharya, I. & Sharma, K. (2007). India in the knowledge economy–an electronic paradigm. International journal of educational management, 21(6), 543–568.
Debbarma, A. & Chinnadurai, A. S. (2023). Empowering Women through Digital Literacy and Access to ICT in Tripura. Research Journal of Advanced Engineering and Science, 9(1), 5–9, 2455–9024.
Devi, V. (2023). Prospects of Digital Literacy of Women: Special Reference to Chitrakoot District, Uttar Pradesh, India. International Journal of Social Sciences Arts & Humanities, 66-71, (ISSN 2321-4147. https://doi.org/ 10.13140/RG.2.2.30770.38080.
Dhanamalar, M., Preethi, S., & Yuvashree, S. (2020). Impact of digitization on women’s em powerment: A study of rural and urban regions in India. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 21(5), 107–112. Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol21/iss5/11.
Eshet, Y. (2004). Digital literacy: A conceptual framework for survival skills in the digital era.Journal of educational multimedia and hypermedia, 13(1), 93–106, 1055–8896.
Marini, S., Hanum, F., & Sulistiyo, A. (2020, February). Digital literacy: Empowering Indonesian women in overcoming digital divide. In 2nd International Conference on Social Science and Character Educations (ICoSSCE 2019) (pp. 137–141). Atlantis Press. https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200130.029.
Nedungadi, P. P., Menon, R., Gutjahr, G., Erickson, L., & Raman, R. (2018). Towards an inclusive digital literacy framework for digital India. Education + Training, 60(6), 516–528.
Purohit, H., Bharti, N., & Josji, A. (2015). Partnering for promotion of Digital Literacy among women in Rajasthan through Bhartiya Model of Digital Literacy. Available at SSRN2665736.
Sarkar, S. (2012). The role of information and communication technology (ICT) in higher education for the 21st century. Science, 1(1), 30–41. ISSN 2277-9566.
Sindakis, S. & Showkat, G. (2024). The digital revolution in India: bridging the gap in rural technology adoption. Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 13(1), 29. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13731-024-00380-w.
Sugiyarti, E., Jasmi, K.A., Basiron, B., Huda, M., Shankar, K., & Maseleno, A. (2018). Decision support system of scholarship grantee selection using data mining. International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, 119(15), 2239–2249.
Bridging the gender divide. (n.d.). ITU. Retrieved June 3, 2024, from: https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/backgrounders/Pages/bridging-the-gender-divide.aspx#:~:text=Of%20the%20estimated%202.7%20billion,compared%20with%2057%25%20of%20women.
https://digitalindia.gov.in/content/vision-and-vision-areas.
Mohan Lal Sukhadia University India
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2882-2554
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.
1. License
The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
2. Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.
If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".
ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).
3. User Rights
Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
4. Co-Authorship
If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.
