Gender And Information Technology Essay, Research Paper

Gender and Information Technology

Information and communications are playing an increasingly important role in economic and social development. Meanwhile, the recent developments in communications technology have progressively reduced the barriers to communicating over distances.

At the same time, computers have enormously increased the capacity to accumulate and access information sources and data. Combined with communications technology, the possibilities for information access are almost infinite. In today’s “information society”, the rapid access to relevant information is indispensable for timely intervention in most realms of human activity; access to this technology is therefore a key to successful action.

It is widely recognized that in order for the world to be able to advance in the quest for sustainable development, peace, social justice and racial, ethnic and gender equality, it is fundamental for citizens’ groups and organizations throughout the world to have greater participation in the decisions that concern them and to develop their capacity to propose viable alternatives and priorities for economic and social development.

This possibility depends to an ever-greater extent on the access of these groups to reap the benefits offered by the new and emerging communications and information technology. In particular, new decentralized technologies such as computer networks and fax, when democratically employed, constitute powerful instruments for socializing information, which could contribute to securing the advances made by humanity, such as fuller participation of women in all spheres of activity.

Women in particular, tend to be under-represented in terms of access to these technologies, and especially women from less developed regions and from marginalized groups. Women from these social groups are precisely those who make up the work force that produces computer components, in working conditions that are often damaging to their health; similarly, women in low-grade technical and service jobs also make up the largest group of computer users, while many others have lost their jobs to increasing automation. In contrast, women are less present in fields such as computer systems administration and in technical development. They are also proportionally under-represented as users of computer networks.

As a result, women have less access than men to the information and networking resources that these networks offer; and they have fewer possibilities of orienting development of this technology to answer their specific needs.

This is not something that women have been pigeonholed into because of prejudice or restraint from abilities. I tired of women crying wolf on this particular topic due to lack of equality. Women have the same chances and rights as men in the IT field. Just because of the boom of high paying jobs that are being offered in this new century women want a piece of the pie, but in some cases they would rather complain, rather than get the proper training to be qualified for the positions. This is not to say that there maybe some prejudice against the hiring of a woman because she is a woman, that particular aspect is not part of my argument. I believe that there is not any inequality of opportunities in the IT profession. I believe that a lot women do not care to pursue this field and this is the reason for the so called “inequality”.