gisw13_chapters

One of the protesting organisations representedRoma women via its Facebook campaigning platformcalled eRomnja. 10 Roma women are among the mostdisadvantaged social groups in Romania, with the highestrate of illiteracy and unemployment, and the lowestlevel of ICT use. 11 A survey conducted in 2011 foundthat only 19% of Roma households owned a desktopor a laptop computer, 12 compared to the 52.9% countryaverage. 13 Very few visible projects have tackled theissue of Roma women and ICTs, and those that havebeen implemented have met with mixed success. Forexample, an EU‐funded initiative aimed at improvingaccess for Roma women to the labour market (2009-2011) succeeded in training only 11 Roma women fromtwo Romanian counties in using computers. 14Measuring access to ICTs in a gender-sensitive wayusing gender indicators is a key issue for the developmentalagenda, but gender-aggregated informationon a macro level is scarce. Gender and ICT statisticsare collected inconsistently across countries and regions.15 For the gender gap index, the World EconomicForum has developed a composite measurementcalled the Global Gender Gap Index or GGGI: Romaniaranked 67th out of 135 countries in 2012, with betterscores for economic participation, education levelsand health, but lagging far behind other countries inthe field of political empowerment. 16From gender equality to digital inclusion?At the lower end of the digital opportunities spectrumin Romania stand elderly Roma women, mostof them living in rural areas; the higher end is representedby young, urban, connected businesswomen– the “digital divas”.A project website called “Digital Divas” features,at its very centre, a man: 17 no matter how successfulone is as a woman, there must be a guardian, a malekey figure offering a warranty of quality, reliabilityand validity of the discourse.But how connected are digital divas?10 www.facebook.com/pages/E-Romnja/48828860789462211 Nagy, E. (2010) Esetbemutatás: egy roma család számítógép- ésinternet-használati szokásai, Reconect, 2(2), p. 138-141.12 www.feminism-romania.ro/publicatii/rapoarte/672-studiusociologic-privind-situaia-femeilor-rome-din-romania.html13 International Telecommunication Union (2012) Measuring theInformation Society, p. 209.14 www.fonduri-structurale.ro/detaliu.aspx?eID=5445&t=Stiri15 Hafkin, N. J. and Huyer, S. (2007) Women and Gender inICT: Statistics and Indicators for Development, InformationTechnologies and International Development, 4(2), p. 27.16 Hausmann R., Tyson, L. and Zahidi, S. (2012) The Global GenderGap Report 2012, World Economic Forum, p. 9-10.17 comunic.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/digital-divas-screenshot.pngThe gender gap and the digital divide: Romaniain the European contextA comparative analysis of 31 European countriesusing a gender and ICT indicator system called GIC-TIS, conducted by Spanish researchers in 2011, hasresulted in a ranking that combines gender equalityand digital inclusion. 18 The authors explain thatgender equality has moved forward in recent years,but further research is needed to find out whetherthe gender gap coincides with the digital divide.European countries were grouped into fivecategories:• High e-inclusion and high e‐equality: Iceland,Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and to alesser extent France, Slovenia and the Netherlands.• High e-inclusion and low e‐equality: Luxemburg,Germany and the United Kingdom.• Medium e-inclusion and e‐equality: Hungary,Malta, Portugal and Slovakia.• Low e-inclusion and high e‐equality: Romania,the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and to a lesser extent,Poland and Belgium.• Low e-inclusion and low e‐equality: Greece, Cyprus,Macedonia, Croatia, and to a lesser extent,Italy, Ireland and Spain. 19Romania ranked 13th out of 31 on the e-equalityscale – measuring gender differences in access toICTs – but last on the e‐inclusion scale, which assessesthe level of ICT use in general.Another study aimed at comparing EU countriesin terms of gender equality and digital inclusionhas found significant improvements in women’s accessto ICTs across Europe from 2009 to 2011, butRomania ranked the lowest among the 27 countriesassessed. 20 Overall, ICT use in Romania lags behindother EU member states, but there are significantdifferences between the young and the elderly, theurban and the rural, the educated and the less educatedpeople in the country. The typical Romaniannon-ICT user lives in a rural area, is older than 55, hasnot completed high school, and is more likely to bea woman. The broadband penetration rate measured18 Castano Collado, C., Fernández, J. M. and Martínez, J. L. (2011)The digital divide from a gender perspective in Spain and Europe:Measuring with composite indicators, Reis, 136, p. 127-140.19 Ibid., p. 136.20 Guerrieri, P. and Bentivegna, S. (2011) Digital Inequalities inEurope, in Guerrieri, P. and Bentivegna, S. (eds.) The EconomicImpact of Digital Technologies: Measuring Inclusion and Diffusionin Europe, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, p. 115.201 / Global Information Society Watch