We mention below briefly a round-up of important issues in this area and the WSIS draft proposals about them. The brief is only suggestive and meant to kick-off effective consultations. Speakers are free to, rather expected to, bring their full expertise to bear upon the subject and inform and educate the participant and the stakeholders involved in building the Information Society. 

Culture is increasingly taking the centre-stage in developmental work. But, there is an apparent paradox here. Development is still often an external intervention into the lives of communities. Culture, on the other hand, is certainly a phenomenon that grows from within, and can only be comprehended, articulated and addressed from within the communities. That a tension would emerge between the two is obvious, and such is the experience of most development practitioners.   

UNESCO describes the ‘indivisibility of culture and development, understood not simply in terms of economic growth, but also as a means of achieving a satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual existence. This development may be defined as that set of capacities that allows groups, communities and nations to define their futures in an integrated manner’*.

As it gets recognized that any development intervention should encompass all aspects of community life, resolving the issues of development-culture interface and interactions is one of the biggest challenges. Can there be a really culture-neutral developmental initiative? If not, can outsiders understand the local culture and devise culture-sensitive strategies? Or, should it be left entirely to elements within the local culture to take up and drive development? Can there be a middle path taking benefit from advantages of both the approaches, and avoiding pitfalls of either?

One area where this tension between development and culture often manifests most is of gender roles. Gender rights are an important concern of developmental interventions, both for its direct benefit to the women, and as important condition for most other aspects of all-round development. Gender roles are also one of the most important component and concern of traditional cultures. In fact, especially when challenged by ‘dominant’ cultural influences from outside, gender roles are likely to get stressed as the representations of culture.

A development initiative based on ICTs holds an even greater challenge to traditional cultures. ICTs are always taken to have strong culture implications., By facilitating ‘cultural flows’ across diverse cultures, ICTs are considered to be one of the strongest forces of homogenization of cultures in favor of politically and economically ‘dominant culture’. That the content available on any media built over the ICTs cannot be neutral is easily understood. What is as important is that the technology structure and systems too have culture implications and biases. Culture analysis of technology is now-a-days increasingly spoken of. Many among traditional communities, and outside, are therefore liable to see ICTs based development initiatives as back-door entry of the ‘dominant culture’, and therefore be wary of them.

ICTs taken to women in traditional cultures can upset information/knowledge asymmetries on which unequal gender roles are built. Access to new information and opportunities can charge expectations that do not sync with traditional roles of women.  These ICTs can expose them to content considered inappropriate for them. An access to these technologies can violate norms of ‘contact’ with men, making possible inappropriate contact, within and outside the community. It is not always easy to separate issues that are only about entrenched gender power structures in the community (and thus are to an extent partisan even within the community and therefore more legitimate to challenge) and those that concern some basic tenets of its culture (over which there is an actual wider consensus). They often may indeed be inseparable.

While developmental initiatives must certainly be devised with great culture sensitivity, it is naïve to think that the development-culture tension could ever be altogether avoided. It is to be accepted that most traditional cultures give a weaker role to women, and have institutional arrangements in place to propagate this in-equality. One cannot sit back and do nothing to prevent oppression of women and denial of life opportunities to them; just because entrenched power structures have complete control over the community’s cultural expression.

Cultures are not stationary. As cultures evolve, gender relations also change. When faced with internal demands or external influences, there is a cultural value set that decides what to take in, what to change, what to keep and what to let go. (Such a value set is of course nebulous, and the involved negotiations far from simple and straightforward.) The effort must be to align any developmental intervention with appropriate elements in such value set.

For example, in the matter of girl education, most cultures do lay some value on ‘learning’, improving general economic well-being, better child-care etc. A case can be made out to show how girls and women were hitherto disadvantaged in education and much economic activity because of ‘problems’ of ‘inappropriate mixing with boys’, having to go to far off places, interaction with outsider men etc, but how the new ICTs can be innovatively used to get them quality education and involvement in economic activity without violating ‘cultural norms’. Demonstrate the possibilities that exist to prevent exposure to inappropriate content and contact, and how content that is culture specific can be locally created and used, and so on.

Much of the weaker position of women in traditional societies is structural, and not owing to some inviolable cultural values. Difficulties in getting education, taking up economic opportunities outside their homes, physical and sexual vulnerability and lack of possibility of organizing among themselves and supporting each other. There are many ways in which the new ICTs support possibilities to overcome these structural handicaps. Such opportunities in the field of education and economic activity are much discussed. However, the opportunities of social organization of women –networking and  mutual support groups- can be as far-reaching, especially initially in order to develop women leadership roles within the community using support of like-minded, and probably, like-cultured women and groups over a wide area. Many women groups have used such support structures employing the new ICTs to highlight cases of violence on women and have wrested important gains. Pakistani women campaigning against honor-killing, is just one such example.  

Such structural changes that empower women, if carried forward in a culture sensitive manner, will certainly shift cultural norms towards a stronger position of women in the family, community and the society. The attempts through capacity building, enabling interaction and content creation/dissemination as well as providing support and organizing possibilities should be to encourage a women’s interpretation of their culture. Further developments may take the contours of this gendered interpretation of culture and its unfolding. 

However, the difficulty involved in negotiating complex cultural realities can never be over-stated. It is best to put great reliance on change agents from within the community. The developmental effort should attempt to ride over and strengthen currents of change and evolution already underway in the community.

In their general threat to cultural diversity, the new ICTs need not be viewed with the same lens as the traditional mass media. The exciting possibility that the new ICTs offer is of distributed content creation, which can be cheap, easy and unlimited; as also the possibilities of easy selective issue based linkages over wide areas. Their use can make it possible for even small cultural communities to have all content in their language and cultural context, and as per their needs. But it cannot be assumed that just because this is possible with the new ICTs, it will happen so. Appropriate strong policy interventions are needed. Both the WSIS drafts, of Declaration of Principles (DOP) (point 8) and the Plan of Action (POA) (points 40 and 41), stress these points. The opportunity and the need is to use the possibilities given by the new ICTs to strengthen both the local cultures and the interweave between them, as they learn to live peacefully and with mutual respect in a connected world.

The important issues that emerge in the context of culture, gender and the new ICTs are;

Development and culture – who sets the priorities

Gender and culture – against forces of change

Is women’s weaker position cultural or merely structural – role of the new ICTs

Networking and support groups among women –challenging traditional vulnerabilities of women

The new ICTs – the way forward to localisation