GEM

GEM is an evaluation methodology that integrates a gender analysis into evaluations of initiatives that use information and communication technologies (ICTs) for social change. It provides a means for determining whether ICTs are worsening or really improving women’s lives and gender relations, as well as for promoting positive change at the individual, institutional, community and broader so...

While the Indian government attempts to include gender on the official agenda in traditional sectors like health and education, gender within the technology sphere is a relatively new concept in India and one that government officials are just not ready to take seriously. They are not convinced by recent findings on the disempowerment of women into rural e-governance in Chhattisgarh, India’s ...

While in Africa and Latin America telecentres are trying to cater to the needs of both sexes by making them more accommodating to women, telecentres in the Philippines are trying to make them more inviting to men. A study which looked at one rural and one fishing community using GEM – the APC’s Gender Evaluation Methodology – has helped telecentre managers learn why men are staying away. ...

Smallholders in the desert region of Huaral depend on irrigation cooperatives to water their crops. For ten years one coop association has been developing an information system based on telecentres to help them to make informed agricultural decisions. But the system is being under-utilised and they decided to find what was going wrong. Using APC’s Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) they foun...

When 29 year-old Huda Sarfraz and her team started to teach Punjabi girls how to create websites and use online chat she feared they might be run out of town. To her surprise however the girls clamoured to learn as much as the boys did and —overturning societal taboos— over-subscribed for the extra-curricular classes – ending up producing prize-winning websites. As a result of guidance pr...

In India’s rural e-governance initiative, 33% of local government seats are reserved for women. Rural village heads of Chhattisgarh State – one of India’s poorest— can now participate in the public process and in theory remotely communicate the needs of their villages through the use of a low-cost computer that does not require computer literacy. But women are not taking the active role...

The knowledge-sharing workshop will be a space to enable the 15 grantees to share outcomes as well as to discuss best practices and lessons learned. It will also be used to gather case studies and stories to feed into the ongoing programmes of partner institutions, as well as for GenARDIS’ own evaluation process. The workshop methodology will be interactive, creative and use different methodo...

In rural Uganda, telecentres that have been established to promote rural access to information and foster development are not getting the results they had hoped for. Using the APC WNSP’s Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) to understand why this is so, UgaBYTES, a Uganda-based NGO that works to promote access to ICTs in rural East Africa, has found that beyond the common obstacles to access l...