{"id":2203,"date":"2016-07-29T13:19:33","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T20:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/?p=2203"},"modified":"2017-05-18T12:00:20","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T19:00:20","slug":"womennetcenter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2016\/07\/womennetcenter\/","title":{"rendered":"women-only hours at community Internet centers? why?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is a blog post I made on 31 August 2009, on my first, now long-gone blog host. Just finally managed to find it at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\">archive.org<\/a><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><strong>women-only hours at community Internet centers? why?<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/angryjayne.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1884\" src=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/angryjayne.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"254\" height=\"222\" \/><\/a>Back in August 2003, I had the pleasure of co-hosting an online discussion at <a href=\"http:\/\/forums.techsoup.org\">TechSoup<\/a> regarding <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/forums.techsoup.org\/cs\/community\/f\/16\/t\/5576.aspx?pi13757=1\">Gender and the Digital Divide<\/a><\/strong>. It was a discussion regarding the barriers that keep women and girls away from computer and Internet-related classes and community technology centers (telecenters, Internet cafes, etc.). One of the things that came up in this discussion back then was that <strong>the barriers for women and girls to tech access are even more pronounced in developing countries<\/strong>, where family-obligations and cultural practices keep large numbers of women from ever stepping foot into a community technology center, telecenter, Internet cafe, etc., whether nonprofit or privately-run.<\/p>\n<p>I was reminded yet again of this recently while corresponding with an Afghan female colleague: her employer has blocks on hundreds of web sites, including several she needs for her own career and skills development. But <strong>using an Internet cafe is not an option for her, and thousands of other women in Kabul like her<\/strong>, because:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li>her family would never allow her to go to such a place without a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mahram\">mahram<\/a> (a male relative she could not marry, such as a brother, uncle, or father, acting as a safety and social escort), and most men aren&#8217;t willing to devote a few hours a week to accompany a female relative to an Internet cafe.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>given the atmosphere of many public Internet sites &#8212; the posters in the wall, what&#8217;s being looked at on some of the computer screens by male patrons, men coming and going &#8212; it&#8217;s not an option for her to use a public Internet site even <em>with<\/em> a mahram.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>My friend &#8212; and thousands of other women in Kabul &#8212; need a place that&#8217;s either devoted only to women Internet users, or, a public site that has women-only hours<\/strong>. I have yet to find either using Web searches and posts to various online communities.<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s not just in Kabul. Cultural practices keep women out of public Internet sites in communities all over the world.<\/p>\n<p>I appreciate so much that I have the freedom where I live to walk into any public place with Internet access, and not have to worry about any social or legal ramifications as a result. But I also have to acknowledge that not every woman on Earth does have this freedom and, until they do, community technology centers run by nonprofits and Internet cafes run for-profit need to think about their accommodations for women and girls.<\/p>\n<p>Public Internet access points in Kabul, elsewhere in Afghanistan, or in other developing countries, can encourage more women to use their services by:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li>creating women-only hours at a time that is appealing to women, or creating a women-only space with its own supervised entrance\/exit and its own bathroom<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li>providing women-only classes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li>staffing women-only hours, women-only spaces or women-only classes by women volunteers or women paid staff members, and with just one or two male staff members (if any) <em>closely<\/em> supervised and never, ever alone with any woman (staff or customer)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li>providing childcare for women using the site (it&#8217;s okay to charge a nominal fee for this)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>a computer user space free of any images that might be deemed offensive to a conservative culture<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>How else can community technology centers, telecenters, Internet cafes, etc. in conservative areas be more accommodating of women and girls? Let&#8217;s hear from you.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8212; end of original blog &#8212;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This blog lead to the creation of this web page, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/development\/women_internet_access.html\">Women&#8217;s Access to Public Internet Centers in Transitional and Developing Countries<\/a>, which I&#8217;ve just updated.<\/p>\n<p>Also see<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2014\/02\/05\/women_ict4d\/\">Enhancing Inclusion of Women &amp; Girls In Information Society<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2015\/10\/02\/virtue\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Virtue &amp; reputation in the developing world<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2015\/11\/12\/judgment\/\">Judgment &amp; reputation online \u2013 and off<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a blog post I made on 31 August 2009, on my first, now long-gone blog host. Just finally managed to find it at archive.org women-only hours at community Internet centers? why? Back in August 2003, I had the pleasure of co-hosting an online discussion at TechSoup regarding Gender and the Digital Divide. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[37,1430,232,266,409,426,1428,1429,540],"class_list":["post-2203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-relationsoutreach","tag-afghanistan","tag-harassing","tag-harassment","tag-internet","tag-reputation","tag-safety","tag-telecenter","tag-telecentre","tag-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-zx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2203"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3298,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions\/3298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}