News this morning

Saw this in the NY Times this morning - yet another testament to the power of the text message.

Women and ICTs in Developed Countries

As an undergraduate at Santa Clara last year, I spent 4 months covering the School of Engineering for my Advanced Journalism class. For my final story for the class, which my school’s newspaper ended up running a few weeks later, I coincidentally chose the topic of women in engineering, because though my alma mater boasts a 25% female engineer population, that percentage actually translates to a very small number because my school is so small. Even so, the number of girl engineers and female engineering faculty was apparently quite impressive on a national scale, but I was always disturbed by the fact that 2 female mechanical engineers in the Class of 2009 could be considered an impressive number.

On that note, the Society of Women Engineers at Santa Clara did a lot of great outreach programs to high school aged girls, to encourage them to pursue a career or a degree in any type of math or science, despite the fact that it’s not the “norm.” I always thought that their outreach efforts were wonderful, and was actually able to interview a few girls who had come to Santa Clara for engineering after spending a few days on campus while in high school. Some of the college girls and faculty members I interviewed provided some interesting and useful insight into this gender divide, so for your reading pleasure, I’ve provided the link to my article here.

*Note: I was only 20 when writing this article, so for those of you with significant journalism experience…don’t judge too harshly

I’m bringing this article to life again because in the reading for this week, I thought it was interesting to note that the number of women going into ICTs and engineering in developed countries, like US and Canada, was not as impressive as it could be, especially compared to women in developing countries. Though my article focuses on a very specific area and a specific population at a small university, I think it could definitely be indicative for nation-wide trends in not only the US, but other developed countries too.

The People’s Impact

In doing the reading for tomorrow’s class, the section that struck me as most interesting and worthy of further research was in the Grace, Kenny and Qiang article on the Internet’s impact on governance. This notion of “bringing the government closer to people” is something that has always interested me, and the stories of local grassroots organizations as well as more developed networks are absolutely inspiring, to see what people are capable of when they are even remotely connected, especially those in LDCs. The article cited a few examples from the Association for Progressive Communication (APC), including a women’s NGO in Mexico city, “EcoNews” in Tanzania and most interesting to me, the NGO “Sakshi” in India that lobbied for sexual harassment legislation. I went to the source on APC’s wesbite, and found multiple other examples of networking over the internet to better different types of civil society, including some in Canada, Yugosalvia, Hungary and Colombia.

One example in particular, and one that anyone with a journalism background can appreciate, is “Ensuring Freedom of Expression for Journalists World-Wide.” A group was established in Toronto, Canada called IFEX (International Freedom of Expression Exchange), and via email, it provides information regarding attacks on journalists and writers , as well as tracking censorship and press laws. And it was established back in 1992! Before most of us even knew what email was! (Well, before I knew what it was anyway - I was only 7 at the time.) This is IFEX’s website now.

I highly encourage you to check out these other examples of networking and civil society, to see how people can effect change using ICTs at the local, regional and even global level. The only thing that concerns me after reading through these examples, and a concern that has been raised in some of my other courses, is the issue of an over-population of NGOs. Clearly, in most environments, their presence contributes to and facilitates growth, and helps people gain a voice especially at the grassroots level. But given their growth exponentially over the past decade or so, I can only hope that at some point, the needs of developing countries can be folded into a more centralized format where they can have an even greater impact. Ultimately, as we’ve seen from the readings for this week, you need the government’s cooperation, and hopefully these network examples are the vehicle for attracting attention and bringing about needed change.