Vienna University of Technology, Dept.f. CSCW, Argentinierstraße 8/187

Vienna, A-1040, Austria

email: eegger@pop.tuwien.ac.at

In recent years the idea of using the new information and communication technologies for building a ‘global village’ has come up in industrialized countries. The underlying model therefore is to link locally independent features and offering them to geographically separated people. ‘Tele-learning’, ‘tele-medicine’, ‘tele-work’, electronic commerce and so forth are only some examples of services which should be transferred all over the world. Western feminists see this trend of globalization as a chance for women: By participating in these networks an empowerment shall take place - by giving women access to knowledge, to work, and to decision-making. This rather euphoric view and uncritical standpoint has to be discussed in the eye of non-western countries. Who will profit from this development?

There is a broad discussion within industrialized countries predicting a transformation of the world into a global village (Doktor et al., 1991, p. 259). Hamilton (1986) already states that this village will be ‘a global marketplace for ideas, money, goods, and services that knows no national boundaries’. The underlying idea is to build up a global infrastructure (based on digital networks) allowing the transmission of all types of information based goods. The first steps are already done: Scientists use world-wide databases and communication channels, firms transfer certain kinds of tasks (such as implementing computer programs) to countries with lower cost, households are using certain tele-shopping services, universities start to offer distance-learning features and the like. Moreover political institutions - such as the European commission - plan to push the transformation process by elaborating an action plan for the entrance into the ‘information society’. The Bangeman report (1994) is one source showing that the distribution of the according infrastructure is based on the well-known capitalist way of thinking: ‘The key issue for the emergence of new markets is the need for a new regulatory environment allowing full competition. This will be a pre-requisite for mobilizing the private capital necessary for innovation, growth and development.’

There is a clear standpoint towards a market-driven development, a fact, the meaning of which for the Third World will be discussed later. Beside these statements of globalizing the market, the idea of a global village is also perpetuated by many (Western) feminists: global village as empowerment chance for women?

In particular these incentives of (Western) feminists have to be analyzed critically when discussing the chances for Third World’s women to participate in the information sciences. Therefore the paper will show that it is rather one-sided to neglect the role of underprivileged countries (and their women) in the discussion of building up a global village.

Aileen Kraditor (1970) states that ‘social feminism is the theory that women should have political, economic, and social rights equal to those of men.’ As a matter of fact many Western feminists focus on studies showing the chance of empowerment for women by using the new information and communication technologies: E.g. Wagner (1991) describes the increasing degree of satisfaction among nurses in hospitals when getting more prestige within the hospital by working with the computer system. Furthermore participation in software-development is seen as a chance for women to re-negotiate competencies and responsibilities (Barley 1986). Tele-work is advertised by pointing to the chance for women to combine paid work and motherhood, and by the way, the global village vision hopes to increase the quality of life by solving some - of course typical first world problems: Keeping the workers partially at home, traffic jams are eliminated, fathers are better integrated in families’ life and so forth. Since such an uncritical and euphoric view on the ‘information society’ should lead generally to a certain skepticism, the following chapter will analyze the hidden, but effective rules of such an unquestioned development. In order to anticipate possible impacts of a certain technological development, an interesting approach is to pose two elementary questions: a) Who is interested in this development (and why)? and b) How is this development pushed?

There is an ongoing discussion (e.g. in Europe) that the willingness of private households to buy and use the basic information and communication technologies’ features (such as telephone, TV and PC) is rather underdeveloped (compare e.g. Hanappi-Egger and Hanappi 1998). Due to this the question of cost is identified as main barrier for a broad distribution of the basic equipment, whereby it has to be distinguished between the kind of cost under consideration: The first step of a wide-area introduction of terminals in households is the availability of the technical infrastructure. Here it became clear that most firms are not interested in investing into the basic infrastructure. Therefore this task is delegated to a government’s responsibility (as it has been also the case for the introduction of telephone systems). As soon as the basic infrastructure is given, private companies fight against political regulation restricting the usage of the infrastructure. We know this kind of mechanisms from the distribution of TV-channels: As soon as governments have financed the basic infrastructure the discussion on liberalizing TV-channels started (see e.g. Brand, 1987).

The second aspect of cost is the running cost for households. E.g. the Austrian telephone-fee policy is building up a financial barrier for using internet-services, since it is much to costly for private users. Therefore we do have another claim for liberalizing the use of the (digital) telephone net in order to open up the free market of services (compare Davidow, 1986).

As we have already shown private firms are interested in building national and international networks without carrying the whole cost for the basic infrastructure. As soon as a state has installed the basic equipment the capitalist (two-folded) way of ‘developing’ a market starts: The privatization of the fee-policy shall grant autonomy of price-making. The demand for certain services is raised by advertising advantages and/or by special offers: e.g. most internet services are (still) for free. As soon as there are enough users thinking that they need this kind of features, fees are introduced.

This certain way of capitalist introduction of a new product-line can be discussed now from a Third World perspective: Assume that a state (i.e. its political institutions) decides to participate in the ‘global village’ development. The following table sketches the main aspects of possible situations:

If the ‘new-comer’ has a similar level of ‘human capital’ development as the industrialized countries the global village connection often is simply used for exploiting the new member. We do already have examples that jobs are transferred to countries with cheaper workers. Therefore the information and communication technologies are one more way to have access to cheap workers or to countries with looser laws protecting employees. As a consequence - as long as the political situation does not allow for emancipation - participating in the global village means to provide firms of the industrialized countries with cheap work, with a high customers’ potential and with holes for all kinds of political regimentation.In the case that the state willing to participate in global networks has a totally different contextual environment (e.g. it is an agricultural area) the question of cost immediately arises. As already mentioned private firms are usually not interested in building up the rather costly basic infrastructure. As long as a country does not care for the equipment - for financial or national reasons - it could easily happen that these countries are cut off from the global village leaving them ‘somewhere behind the moon’. If the installation of this equipment is seen as a public task, it has also been faced that by introducing this infrastructure a certain ‘language’ is imported (see also Egger and Hanappi, 1994). Therefore it can be stated that the global village vision embodies the invasion of a certain language: namely the language of white capitalist men. What this means from a feminist’s point of view will be discussed in the next chapter.

As we have seen the introduction of the new information and communication technologies follows well-known (white) capitalist men’s way of thinking. The distribution of features allowing private households to participate in the global village depends very much on the willingness to accept the hidden models: The introduction of home-terminals will force the users to accept a certain language focusing on increasing efficiency. The break down of the clear distinction of paid employment and reproduction field has tremendous political traps often neglected by (Western) feminists: Besides the social importance of paid work the privatization of this area will slip from political control leading to market-driven mechanisms. One example shown by empirical studies (e.g. Kolm et al., 1996) is the question of availability. While traditionally workers’ protection laws see for determined leisure times the global village network ‘allows’ full-time availability. This aspect was overseen when recommending e.g. tele-work: Fact is that the embedding of fathers into family and household was not realized, but the family (and especially the women) organized the whole private life along the working hours of the (male) tele-worker (see also Haddon and Silverstone, 1992). Generally it has to be faced that motivating (privileged, First World’s) women to participate in the area of new information and communication technologies does not imply structural changes. Hanappi and Egger (1995) have shown that exploitation takes place at different levels: While capitalist systems are based on the exploitation of workers, exploitation of women happens parallel: exploited male workers exploit their women. Due to this it becomes clear that the investigation of the global village vision from a feminist perspective cannot be reduced to the role of (First World) women. Moreover it has to be faced that the contribution of certain groups has to be enlarged by several categories: level of development, class, race and gender. As a consequence the following conclusion can be drawn:

As long as there is no serious political change in this development, the hope of empowerment of women by the use of information and communication technologies is simply a naive view concentrating on a very specific privileged group of women. Even if Western feminists profit (very partially) by using the new technologies this does not mean that women in the Third World could (at least partially) experience the same (see also Haraway, 1990). Moreover it has to be seen that those women loose double: first by living in a Third World country and second by being women. As a consequence of this first step - namely to realize the problem - we urgently have to start the discussion on hidden models in the global village and to find ways out of the given traps as sketched in this paper.