شکستن دیوار طرد اجتماعی زنان روستایی با استفاده از فناوری اطلاعات و ارتباطات: مورد 'تقسیم دیجیتالی به گالیسی

This paper examines the digital divides for women in rural areas within the Information Society, referring particularly to the Galician experience (Autonomous Region in the North West of Spain). In order to explore the barriers to social and labor exclusion it was elaborated a survey relating with the use and impact of ITC in social and labor experiences of rural women. The results showed that rural women are aware of the key role played for ITC on their way to achieve the participation on decision making process as well as in social life and labor. The main barriers to the Internet penetration in women social life were employment, education and income. From an individual point of view, the existence of non-users was explained by a combination of access problems, lack of ICT skills or rather negative attitudes towards ITC. Finally, a bunch of policy recommendations is proposed focus on providing better Internet access in rural areas and to sensitize the population, particularly the oldest, about the importance of gender equality in access to technology in order to avoid digital barriers for rural women and reduce social exclusion of this group.

ITC are key promoting community connectivity in contemporary society (; Bin-Abbas & Haj Bakry, 2012). However, and against the generalized and speed on penetration of Internet,1 non-user community groups persist in economically and geographically marginalised areas (Rogers, 2003). These minority communities are at risk of digital exclusion and therefore, due to the existing digital age, of social exclusion (Tsatsou et al., 2011). The existence of non-users can be explained by a combination of access problems, lack of ICT skills or rather negative attitudes towards ITC (Verdegem & Verhoest, 2009). As result, an inequality in the power to communicate and to process information digitally is generated. This phenomenon, the so-called ‘digital divides’ (Hilbert, 2011, NTIA, 1999 and OECD, 2001) is hampering the connectivity online. According to Polat (2012) the main minority communities less likely to be Internet users appears when communities are old, disabled, female, reside in rural areas and existing policies do not reach out to these groups. In particular, gender inequalities are behind the main disadvantage for women to use Internet in the day life (Prado Martínez, 2007). Our society does not have yet to be embarked on the path of reconciliation between a woman’s work and her family duties; nor have begun to mesh out a sense of shared responsibility across genders. For example, the unpaid work women do at home, called reproductive tax (Palmer, 1992), represents 37% of Galician gross domestic product (Galician Statistics Institute, 2006). Since Internet has become an important tool for women’ social and labor inclusion some measures must be implemented to avoid this gender digital divides. Indeed, in some countries, such as Iran, Internet became in an important tool to participate in communication discourse and social action and, because of that, female Internet users have increased in the last years (Shirazi, 2012). Using data from 12 Latin American and 13 African countries from 2005 to 2008, Hilbert (2011) shows that the minor women access and use of ITC is a direct result of their unfavorable conditions with respect to employment, education and income. The APC women’s program2 analyzed Internet access problems of 700 women’s groups worldwide and concluded that lack of technology training and inadequate knowledge are the main problems in Europe and the United States. These aspects algo ranked second in importance in other countries where the main problems are lack of infrastructure and a shortage of economic resources. On the other hand, digital disparities are interwoven with other social inequalities, reinforcing the effects on social and economic inequalities. In Europe, Internet-based political and social communication (Ricci, 1998 and Servaes and Heinderyckx, 2002) has been influenced by a strong technology dimension, with an emphasis on the installation of necessary infrastructure and equipment, especially in rural areas (Grimes, 2000 and Preston et al., 2007). However, in the last years, the interest about the social dimension has increased strongly. In the EU, the main policies developed to improve rural areas focused on diminishing effects of distance from core markets and enhancing the learning capacities by improving access to relevant information (Bocconi et al., 2012 and Grimes, 2000). Since the evolution of businesses makes knowledge of ITC a central pillar of social relations (UN, 2008), it is imperative that difficulty in accessing new technologies not be added to the burdens faced by women (especially in rural areas) to avoid a digital divide along gender lines. Moreover, the development of social policies (specifically, policies of inequality) have served to design and put in place several actions to minimize the risk of social exclusion for women. This is true even in certain areas of the developed countries of the European Union, especially Objective I areas, such as our case study, Galician, in the northwest of Spain. These policies are particularly necessary since many social development indicators place this region under the Spanish and European average. In February 2010, the Galician regional government launched a Broadband Plan which aimed to bring Internet connection to even the most inaccessible areas. Almost a year later, approximately one third of the total population which previously had no access to the network can now go online without any technical difficulties.3 Despite these advances, Internet access in Galician society is still smaller than the average in Spain. Based on data from November 2010 included in the General Media Study relating to this regional area, 44.3% of Galician people were identified as Internet users against the 25% users in 2005. By gender, men spend the most hours online (a total of 55.2) followed closely by women (44.8). However, these results are still insufficient. However, despite all these efforts and policy measures, Galicia has a disadvantage position in development indices of Information Policy. This paper focuses the analysis on a selected minority community of this digital inequality, the women in the rural area of Galician (Spain), and gives some social and economic policy recommendations to increase ITC penetration and reduce social exclusion of this group. The results showed that rural women are aware of the key role played for ITC on their way to achieve the participation on decision making process as well as in social life and labor. The main barriers to the Internet penetration in women social life were employment, education and income. From an individual point of view, the existence of non-users was explained by a combination of access problems, lack of ICT skills or rather negative attitudes towards ITC. After this introduction, this paper has been structured as follows. In Section 2, it is discussed the main factors explaining the current situation of women in rural areas, focusing especially in the Galician case. In Section 3, an approach the social reality of rural women in Galicia through two complementary types of analysis is undertaken: a qualitative approach through personal interviews and a quantitative one by developing a questionnaire and a survey. In Section 4, they are summarized the results obtained by this fieldwork. In Section 5, a bunch of policy recommendations arising from the rural women in Galicia are shown. Finally, Section 6 summarize the main conclusions of the paper.

This paper aims only to raise awareness in society about the existence of certain groups who suffer social exclusion and whose solution in most cases is as simple as promoting access to new technologies. In particular, the analysis was focused on a selected minority community of this digital inequality, the rural women in the area of Galician, in the northwest of Spain. In February 2010, the Galician regional government launched a Broadband Plan which aimed to bring Internet connection to even the most inaccessible areas. Despite these advances, Internet access in Galician society is still smaller than the average in Spain. Based on data from November 2010, 44.3% of Galician people were identified as Internet users against the 25% users in 2005. By gender, men spend the most hours online (a total of 55.2) followed closely by women (44.8). These results are still insufficient and Galicia still has a disadvantage position in development indices of Information Policy. Since Internet has become an important tool for women’ social and labor inclusion some measures must be implemented to avoid this gender digital divides. With this aim, it is shown what measures can increase the penetration of ICT in the rural areas and what extent these ones can reduce the percentage of digital natives in these regions. The main barriers to the Internet penetration in women social life were employment, education and income. In the particular case of rural women, employment is frequently poorly paid, low-status or below their capacities. Thus, for rural women, to combine work or educational activities with everyday responsibilities is, in practice, very complicated since women are focus on agricultural activities related to farms or livestock. This paper analyzes the above aspects to the particular case of the region of Galicia, approaching the social reality of rural women from a broadly use of technology. Our research design was conducted to 80 women living in rural areas. The type of analysis was mainly based on a quantitative approach by developing a survey by means of a questionnaire and it was completed with a qualitative research through personal interviews. The results showed that rural women are aware of the key role played for ITC on their way to achieve the participation on decision making process as well as in social life and labor. From an individual point of view, the existence of non-users was explained by a combination of access problems, lack of ICT skills or rather negative attitudes towards ITC. The quantitative survey demonstrate that ITC helped them improve their social relationships, self-esteem, access to training and information, social participation, level of inclusion and integration in the labor market. Moreover, it was found that rural women’s associations of Galicia are making a major effort to introduce ICT literacy by offering range of educational and recreational activities. Not only do they provide training, but they themselves use the new technologies, particularly social networks, to be released. The in-depth interviews showed strong similarities to the results of quantitative survey but it introduced nuances and values which clearly enriched the analysis. Finally, some social and economic policy recommendations are proposed to increase ITC penetration and reduce social exclusion of this group from a triple perspective: access, skills and attitudes to the ITC. With this initial target, it has become possible to outline the causes of the digital divide. In particular, public policies measures are searched to reduce gender inequalities through ICT by which rural women can increase its stake in the new Information Society at a rate similar to that of men; increase their presence in the labor market; access to better training; better harmonize work and family; develop new forms of self-employment; telecommuting or network companies; greater economic independence to make purchases on the web or simply as an instrument of social interaction and entertainment.