Information Technology for Development

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“Missing women”: Gender, ICTs, and the shaping of

the global economy

Hazel Gillard, Debra Howcroft, Natalie Mitev & Helen Richardson

To cite this article: Hazel Gillard, Debra Howcroft, Natalie Mitev & Helen Richardson (2008)
“Missing women”: Gender, ICTs, and the shaping of the global economy, Information
Technology for Development, 14:4, 262-279, DOI: 10.1002/itdj.20098

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“Missing Women”: Gender, ICTs, and the Shaping of
the Global Economy
Hazel Gillard
London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London,
LONDON WC2 2AE. E-mail: [email protected]
Debra Howcroft
Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL.
E-mail: [email protected]
Natalie Mitev
London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London,
LONDON WC2 2AE. E-mail: [email protected]
Helen Richardson
Salford Business School, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT.
E-mail: [email protected]

The agency of women as a force for change is one of the most neglected aspects of the development
literature. (Drèze & Sen, 1995, p. 178)

ABSTRACT
In a key article (Walsham & Sahay, 2005) outlining research on information systems in developing
countries and suggesting potential areas for future research, a notable omission was the issue of gender
and gender relations. In this article, we draw on the substantial gender and development literature to
demonstrate the centrality of gender to our understanding of information systems (IS) in developing
countries. In particular, we consider the relationship among gender, information and communication
technologies (ICTs), and globalization to illustrate how changes in the global economy both impact
on and are influenced by changing gender identities and roles.  C 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords: gender, gender relations, development, developing countries, information and commu-
nication technologies

“Missing Women” refers to an article entitled “More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing,” written by Sen
in the New York Review of Books (1990), that analyzed the mortality impact of unequal rights between the genders
in the developing world.
Sajda Qureshi was the accepting Editor for this article.

Information Technology for Development, Vol. 14 (4) 262–279 (2008) 

C 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/itdj.20098

262
 “MISSING WOMEN”: GENDER, ICTS, AND THE SHAPING OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 263

1. INTRODUCTION
In a recent article, Walsham and Sahay (2005) set out the current landscape of research
on information systems (IS) in developing countries, identifying gaps in the literature and
suggesting some areas for further research. It is our intention here to extend this landscape
to include consideration of the important analysis of gender issues, which are absent from
their conceptual overview. Drawing on the gender and development literature, in this article
we aim to show how a political economy of development is interwoven with information
and communication technology (ICT) capitalist productivity and how the lives of women
in particular are shaped by emerging global patterns in the feminization of employment.
We offer a gender framework in which critical reflection is applied to how development
is woven in national and international governance, business practices and concerns, and
public and private employment configurations. As Walsham and Sahay (2005) flag, the
absence of such reflection within the IS literature on development is a serious omission,
and by extending the analytical tools of feminist theorizing, we may open up debates on how
culturally specific practices of ICT adoption and work processes impose specific ways of
being in local arenas subject to developmental control. A gendered lens help us to unravel
the variances in local socioeconomic, political, cultural and personal arrangements, the
areas of tension between these arrangements that are experienced, and the relation of ICT
capitalist productivity to them. Within this analytical framework, the array of differences
that emerge may be juxtapositioned against the myths of homogeneity and equity that ICT
infrastructure deployment is said to give rise to.
The article will proceed as follows. The next section begins by outlining our research
approach before going on to briefly clarify some of the conceptual apparatus that we
employ, namely, gender construction, gender relations, and gender differences. Gender
mainstreaming policies that seek to improve the visibility of women are then discussed and
argued to be problematic because the logic of inclusion is based on homogeneity of outcome.
The article proceeds to the relation among gender, ICTs, and globalization, which takes the
form of the feminization of employment. Augmenting gaps in gender parity, the impact of
ICTs on women’s work and lives is explored by charting a number of economic profiles.
Briefly contextualizing the expansion of manufacturing and service sectors in developing
countries, gendered practices are highlighted as the characteristics of employment for
women reflect inequities and limited opportunities. Furthermore, the clustering of economic
activity, which is predominantly city based, is linked to the reorganization of international
companies pursuing new markets, and this spatial reconfiguration means many women turn
to home-based employment or telework. These informal employment activities provide
key sources of income and hence degrees of independence, but they supply capitalism with
flexible, extremely cheap, and unprotected labor. Structures and relations of domestic labor
contour women’s bargaining power, and the penultimate section argues for the need to
understand the totality of women’s working lives. Finally, we offer some conclusions.

2. RESEARCH APPROACH
Given that our intention is to extend the landscape of research on IS in developing countries,
as outlined by Walsham and Sahay (2005), the method that we adopted for our investigation
began by conferring with the 13 journals with which they had consulted in their inquiry (as
listed in their appendices). We began by reviewing these journals published between 2000
and 2006 to find out the extent to which the issue of gender, ICTs, and developing countries
Information Technology for Development DOI: 10.1002/itdj
264 GILLARD, HOWCROFT, MITEV, AND RICHARDSON

had been addressed before analyzing how the issues had been tackled. We were interested
in articles in which the issue of gender and developing countries was the sole focus of the
study or an important feature in contributing to a related topic.
There was a limited amount of articles addressing this issue, aside from some notable
exceptions (the European Journal of Information Systems with four articles; the Electronic
Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries with three articles; and Information
Technology for Development with two articles). The low occurrence of articles of this
nature is hardly surprising, given that gender in IS more generally is a neglected area of
research (Adam, Howcroft, & Richardson, 2004). However, because the issue of gender
and developing countries was featured in some of the journals, this suggests that it is an
important and emerging field of study and one that needs a voice within the “landscape and
prospects” of ICTs and developing countries research.
Our next task was to review the three areas developed by Walsham and Sahay (2005) as
a foundation for their analysis of the IS and developing countries literature. This included
key challenges of ICTs, the role of technology, and theory and method adopted when
researching IS in developing countries. As our work is informed by the critical paradigm
advancing a political agenda, (Richardson & Howcroft, 2006), we prefer to adopt a more
holistic view when researching gender, ICTs, and developing countries that encompasses the
political, economic, social, historical, and cultural context of global capitalist development.
Therefore, Walsham and Sahay’s (2005) key areas are broadened to embrace gendered
experiences in the labor market, gender mainstreaming, the feminization of employment
within various sectors, and an analysis of women’s role in the household and community.

3. GENDER CONSTRUCTION: AXES OF RELATIONAL DIFFERENCE

Given the paucity of gender-related studies in IS, it is worthwhile outlining some key terms.
Therefore, this section is intended to provide a summary of the meanings of gender, gender
relations, and gender differences because these provide the conceptual tools for a gender,
ICTs, and development research focus.
While sex reflects biological difference, gender—although often based on biological
sex—is a social construction (Adam, 2005; Elson, 1995; Kothari, 2002). Individuals are
born and immediately classified as female or male, and over time acquire a gendered
identity, that is, what it means to be feminine or masculine (Elson, 1995). Both gendered
concepts are relational (Wajcman, 1998), that is, they are construed in relation to each other
by defining what the female is not in relation to the Western masculine norm; this varies
from one environment to another and shifts over time.
Gender relations refer to the particular power dynamics embodied in our conceptualiza-
tions of difference and sameness, that is, unequal variances or assumed equalities between
women and men. The gender regimes, or the array of “institutional power relations between
men and women where gender is a property of institutions and historical processes, as well
as individuals” (Wajcman, 1998, p. 3) is changing from one which was based on women
being predominately based in the domestic sphere to one in which women are increasingly
present in the public sphere, although frequently in unequal positions (Walby, 1997). There-
fore, the main focus of a gender, ICTs, and development approach is not on women per
se but the socially constructed relations between women and men. More important, it rec-
ognizes that women and men are positioned differently in society and that not all women
or all men share the same experiences. It recognizes that the development process has
Information Technology for Development DOI: 10.1002/itdj
 “MISSING WOMEN”: GENDER, ICTS, AND THE SHAPING OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 265

affected women and men differently, with women being increasingly marginalized (Elson,
1995; Kabeer, 1994). However, a gender perspective does not simply focus on differences
between women and men but considers how this differentiation acts as the basis for the
unequal distributions of power (Wajcman, 1998; Pearson, 2006; Perrons, 2004).
How the gendering of work, economics, development, skills, technology, the household,
and indeed many other aspects of social, political, and economic life constitute individuals
as different types of value-added laborers can be made visible by documenting cultural
values, beliefs, and activities, which contribute toward identity formulations, roles and
responsibilities, and personal aspirations and opportunities. How these micro dimensions of
everyday existence are informed and reinforced by community and institutional hegemonic
ideologies and practices that support the normalized status quo provide the sources and
structures of inequitable power relations. In the development of global capitalism, there is a
prevailing economic and social system that generates inequalities albeit to different degrees
in different places. However, gender inequality is both significant and universal (Perrons,
2004). Women, relative to men, are experiencing higher rates of hunger and malnutrition,
illiteracy, overwork, and sexual violence (Hambly Odame, 2005). More women than men
live in rural areas of developing countries where the infrastructure is far less developed and
within poor households, women are the poorest of the poor (Hafkin & Taggart, 2001).
To provide detailed understanding of these issues, a gender, ICTs, and development
research focus needs to anticipate the differential effect on women and men of develop-
ment interventions, which are linked to the socioeconomic aspects of people’s lives. This
foregrounds gender ideologies, structures, and norms, which shape the diverse positioning
of women and men (Pearson, 2006). For us, an appreciation of gender issues and relations
also requires an understanding of the dynamics of the material world. Our approach draws
on feminism because this challenges the existing canon, theorizes inequalities, and has a
vision of political change. While some may have reacted against the incorporation of gender
issues into the development agenda, arguing that it reflects a Western and imperialist bias,
we concur with Pearson (2000) that its relevance to development policy and institutions
transcends the local. We will now turn our attention to how gender issues have become
“mainstreamed” in development policy.

4. GENDER MAINSTREAMING: EPHEMERAL ATTEMPTS

AT HOMOGENIZATION
Until the 1970s, women were virtually invisible to development planners and policy makers
(Elson, 1995; Kothari, 2002). Their economic activities were often ignored given that much
of their labor was unpaid and undervalued as compared with men’s labor. Elson (1999)
eloquently argues that labor markets are gendered in the way in which they operate at
the intersection of how people earn a living and care for others. Economic activities that
contribute to national production are seen as the “productive economy,” while unpaid
caring activities—the “reproductive economy,” although crucial for reproducing the future
labor force—fail to be acknowledged. This trivializes women’s employment and ignores
the gender division of labor whereby production outside the market and its contribution
to economic productivity goes largely unacknowledged. This lack of validity for women
as economic actors has justified their absence from the framework of what constituted
development.
More recently, the centrality of gender to economic and social change has been un-
derstood by many in development agencies and international organizations, such as the
Information Technology for Development DOI: 10.1002/itdj
266 GILLARD, HOWCROFT, MITEV, AND RICHARDSON

United Nations (UN; Kothari, 2002; Perrons, 2004). Since 1995, gender has had a higher
profile in world politics, notably with the Fourth UN Conference on Women in Beijing,
which specified a platform to which many countries subscribed (Perrons, 2004). This effort
is referred to as “gender mainstreaming” and has required an increased representation of
women at all levels and greater significance of gender issues in their activities, playing a
more central role in discussions on labor markets, poverty, and debt issues for example. As
international agencies have mainstreamed gender, international aid has become conditional
upon gender impact assessments resulting in many less developed countries taking gender
issues far more seriously than some OECD countries (Perrons, 2004).
Despite progress, there are some concerns. Pearson (2006) notes that regardless of
efforts to place gender at the heart of development activity, it remains “a marginal and
optional add-on” (p. 190). There is evidence to suggest instrumentalization of these issues
with projects that do not necessarily serve feminist goals or may in fact be in conflict
with them (Benerı́a, 2003). While this “efficiency approach” is important for women’s
advancement, the primary goal falls short of concerns with women’s overall well-being
(Beneria & Sen, 1981; Pearson, 2006; Sen, 1999). As many Western corporations and
governments attempt to recognize and validate difference through diversity policies, they
in fact leave the power mechanisms of conformity unchallenged and intact, individualize the
inequities, bypass tensions of coexistence, and actually reinforce and homogenize difference
(Wajcman, 1998; Gillard, Mitev, & Scott, 2007). Some of these initiatives and programs
have been described as an “add women and stir” approach (Harding, 1987), as they fail
to question gender-based power relations. The bureaucratization of gender guidelines all
too often tends to reinforce institutional influence and silences those whose voices rarely
get aired in the development forums where decisions are made (Standing, 2007). Women’s
agency in their own environments remains a hidden, concrete activity necessary for their
personal transformation or empowerment (such as comprehensive healthcare, childcare,
education, and equal pay) risks taking second place. In the rush to appear proactive, this
reliance on bureaucratisation assumes that bureaucracies are engines of social and political
transformation; they usually are not, but greater political agency may be (Standing, 2007).
As the link between gender and development policy, implementation, and social empow-
erment is inadequately conceptualized, gender mainstreamers within or close to the UN
system and G8 have had a modest impact (Hambly Odame, 2004; Standing, 2007). They fail
to factor in the recalcitrance of organizational practices, the costs or time factors of imple-
mentation, or indeed the weaknesses of the legal foundations that rest on the capriciousness
of politico-economic climates (Gillard, 2006). Evidence from gender mainstreaming in the
European Union has shown that what may first appear as a radical way forward, in reality
is far more concerned with the participation of women in the labor market regardless of
low pay, poor working conditions, tensions between working and domestic life, and other
trappings of social injustice and inequality.
Unfortunately, therefore, gender mainstreaming is ephemeral, particularly in the context
of gender and ICT policy in examples such as the UN ICT Task Force, the International
Telecomms Union (ITU), and World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS; Hambly
Odame, 2005). ICTs are often seen as key to promoting development, offering opportunities
for women to enter the workforce and become involved in enterprise (Morgan, Heeks, &
Arun, 2004). Yet some of the claims about the likely “impact” of new technologies must
be contextualized in terms of the social, economic, and cultural aspects of working lives
(Huyer, 2003; Huyer & Mitter, 2003). While for some, ICTs may be viewed positively
in the context of development problems, for others the issue of failure or partial failure

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 “MISSING WOMEN”: GENDER, ICTS, AND THE SHAPING OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 267

(Avgerou & Walsham, 2000; Heeks, 2004) raises questions about the moral weight of
diverting scarce resources from other worthwhile projects to ICT initiatives (Steinmuller,
2001). Technology, generally, and ICTs, in particular, are often touted as an instrument for
bridging the gap between developed and developing countries, yet these assumed economic
and social gains, often perceived within a market regime, are dubious at best (Avgerou,
2003).
Our analysis of gender, ICTs, and development in the context of capitalist productivity
is pertinent given the presence of pro-ICT for development and women’s empowerment
literature (Huyer, 2003, 2005; Huyer & Mitter, 2003; Mitter, 1994, 2000, 2003). Global
institutions such as the UN and the World Bank are focusing on the “ordinary” con-
sumer and the citizen, as is reflected in their “pro-human development” and “pro-poor
growth” policies (Huyer & Mitter, 2003). Seeking improvement in employment opportu-
nities for certain marginalized communities, investment in low cost ICT infrastructures,
micro-credit schemes and income generating high-tech projects, such as home teleworking1
and telecentres,2 are advocated as critical for creating non-traditional economic opportuni-
ties, particularly for women (Mitter, 1994, 2000, 2003; Huyer, 2003, 2005).
This “women-friendly” approach to development (Huyer, 2005) is regarded as not only
benefiting women but also their families, local communities, productivity, and the nation
as a whole, which, in turn, will improve social equality and women’s empowerment.
Underlying this technological push is the basic right to communicate, have access to the ICT
infrastructure to increase social networking, improve digital knowledge, and be informed
of opportunities such as micro-credit schemes, for example (Hafkin 2002; Huyer & Mitter
2003; Huyer 2005). In addition, this connectivity is regarded as essential for improving
rural productivity, where the vast majority of women are located, and for investment in
human capital that will strengthen a country’s productive competitiveness in the emerging
global e-economy.

5. GENDER, ICTS, AND GLOBALIZATION: THE FEMINIZATION

OF EMPLOYMENT
Changes in the global division of labor that came into existence in the 1970s have been
facilitated by continued improvements in ICTs and have contributed to the feminization
of employment3 (Perrons, 2004). International trends have been for female labor force
participation to rise, while the male participation rates are falling (Standing, 1999, 2006).
Between 1975 and 1995, 74% of developing countries and 70% of developed countries had
increases in women’s economic activity rates, while during the same period male activity
rates decreased in 66% of developing and 95% of developed countries (Standing, 1999).
This has been in parallel with the processes of labor market regulation and flexibilization,
which has led to institutional changes at the micro level, including outsourcing and changes
in the composition of the workforce. The new international division of labor and the
accompanying structural, material changes are gendered, with differential consequences

1 Teleworking refers to a wide range of distant or remote computer mediated work that can be institution-based

or home-based and carried through ICT networked infrastructures.

2 Telecentres are community-based institutions that offer public access to high-tech information services for

local businesses and free use for disadvantaged groups.

3 The term was intended to highlight the irony of integrating women as equals into the labour market at a time

when women have been pushed into more precarious forms of work.

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268 GILLARD, HOWCROFT, MITEV, AND RICHARDSON

for women and men (Benerı́a, 2001). There has been an emphasis on the key role of
women’s labor to deal with international competition and global markets, as large numbers
of women workers from developing countries entered both the formal and the informal
labor force. Feminization is used to characterize the activities associated with “women’s
work”: ideologically constructed and with fluid definitions according to the role of the
family within global capitalism and fulfilling the specific requirements of the local labor
market at any given time. It also refers to the pattern of employment, which results in
increasing numbers of women occupying certain jobs.4
No country has industrialized without mobilizing large numbers of women workers
(Standing, 2006) and studies have documented a preference for women workers in differ-
ent sectors, particularly in export-oriented, labor-intensive industries relying on low-cost
production for global markets. Women predominate in industries were profit margins are
protected by reducing labor costs, extending working hours or reducing the number of for-
mal workers (Standing, 2006). The feminization of employment expanded initially with the
manufacturing sector, and more recently with the internationalization of services (Miozzo
& Soete, 2001), especially call centres and data entry. This phenomenon is most marked
in Asia, but it has also affected much of Latin America, with the growth of the service sec-
tor contributing toward greater polarization of earnings between highly paid “knowledge”
workers and poorly remunerated generic employees in the caring, cleaning, and catering
industries (Perrons, 2004).
These structural developments have affected women’s work in developing countries by

• altering the process of production in manufacturing and service industries through

automation, deskilling of workers, and augmenting skills of key jobs;
• the introduction of new products and services into the market, such as electronics or
computer peripherals; and
• shifting production to locations that are distant from the main sites of commercial
units or to home-based workers. (Mitter & Rowbotham, 1997; Perrons, 2004)

We will now focus on these material changes by outlining a number of different economic
profiles, illuminated by a gender analysis of global change.

5.1 A Manufacturing Sector Profile

With regard to the manufacturing sector, women now represent more than a third of the
labor force in developing countries and almost one half in some Asian countries (Mehra
& Gammage, 1999). The greatest increases occurred in countries that focused on low
wage production for export—export-processing zones (EPZs)—and informal employment
in low-wage, labor-intensive manufacturing (Benerı́a, 2003), which were often exempt
from labor regulations (Mehra & Gammage, 1999). Export-led industrialisation is based
on significant inequalities, particularly as regards the gender division of labor and the
gender wage gap (Benerı́a, 2001). At the heart of low-cost production for global markets is
“flexible production” and women are seen as the most flexible labor supply in terms of their
willingness to accept temporary contracts and unstable working conditions. Evidence of

4 Elson (1999) argues that rising labour force participation is in part a statistical
artefact, arising from improve-
ments in accounting practices of women’s economic activity. Perrons (2004) also queries the extent to which the
statistics represent material change.

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 “MISSING WOMEN”: GENDER, ICTS, AND THE SHAPING OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 269

this discrimination can be seen in the report from the UN in 1995, which found that in none
of the 37 countries for which data was available did women’s wages in manufacturing equal
that of men (cited in Standing, 1999). Ten years on, the situation is improving somewhat
as women’s wages in manufacturing grew at a faster rate than male wages between 1995–
2005, although these gains are partly aimed at redressing some of the inequities regarding
the gender pay gap, which is still prevalent in many countries (ILO/KILM, 2007).
In the first phase of global migration to Asia in the 1970s, IT-related manufacturing
jobs were labor intensive, contingent, primarily assembly line or semi-skilled, low-wage,
with long hours, and harsh conditions (Castells, 1996, 1997; Mehra & Gammage, 1999).
Much of the production focused on low technology consumer goods, such as radios and
televisions. Over the last 20 years, however, the pattern has changed from making IT to using
IT in nearly every manufacturing industry (Hafkin & Taggart, 2001). Today, globalized
manufacturing still demands cheap labor but with greater technical and cognitive skills
than in the first phase. Therefore, the skills of female “nimble fingers” become redundant
and are replaced by (primarily male) skilled technicians and engineers. For example, as
the technology advances in Malaysia and Latin America, men are replacing lower skilled
women in the electronics industry resulting in an overall reduction in female employment.
The need for specialist skills translates into a demand for male labor as firms are opting
to employ younger, inexperienced men from technical schools rather than retrain their
existing female workforce, often despite a history of long service. As work becomes more
specialized and technological the labor force shows a trend towards defeminization (Mehra
& Gammage, 1999). Although conditions in manufacturing in the 1970s were far from
ideal, nevertheless this option should not be closed off to women workers who may not
wish to return to their prior situations. Any gains that women might have achieved through
working in the manufacturing sector are now appearing to be short-lived as they are forced
out or marginalised within the sector (Mehra & Gammage, 1999).

5.2 A Service Sector5 Profile

The rapid formation of the female labor force across the globe has been tied, in particular, to
the rapid shift from agriculture and to the growth of the service sector (Benerı́a, 2003; Mehra
& Gammage, 1999). The restructuring of the labor market and the labor process has seen
moves to transfer some aspects of service sector work to less developed countries as firms
search for cheaper and more flexible ways to accumulate capital. Huws (2007) describes this
process as one of defragmentation whereby units of human skill and knowledge are broken
down into increasingly standardized and interchangeable units that can be reconfigured into
new permutations and combinations, spatially and across other dimensions.
The first wave of IT-enabled service sector jobs in developing countries was in online
export-oriented information processing (especially medical transcription, banking, insur-
ance, and airline data entry), and these jobs were done almost entirely by women. For
example, for the past 30 years, large numbers of female data entry workers have been
employed in Barbados and Jamaica, and in the West Indies 99% of these workers are
female (Hafkin & Taggart, 2001). More recently, female data entry workers have come to
predominate in China, India, Singapore, and Vietnam.

5 The service sector also includes prostitution and related services and domestic and day-care workers. Given
the focus of this paper is on gender and ICTs the focus will be on “pink-collar” offices and work broadly defined
as clerical, sales, and services.

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270 GILLARD, HOWCROFT, MITEV, AND RICHARDSON

A popular example of this type of employment concerns call centres, particularly those
based in India. These are subsumed within two broader categories of IT Enabled Services
(ITES) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). These centres are being globally located
via outsourcing and offshoring in the hope of taking advantage of different time zones
and lower wages, while enabling firms to achieve round-the-clock operations. Without
doubt, the overriding factor that is driving this migration of call centre work to developing
countries is the promise of substantial cost savings. They combine front-office (voice) and
back-office work, with the former carried out mainly at night and the latter during the day
(Taylor & Bain, 2004). In her study of call centres that are based in India, Poster (2007b)
argues that this process is creating a society whereby people do not know what time it is in
their material world and describes New Delhi not as a 24-hour global city but as a city that
is temporally divided by day and night, global and local, North and South.
Much of the “front-line work” (Frenkel, Korczynski, Shire, & Tam, 1999) in call cen-
tres is carried out by women since their social and emotional skills are often designated
as gender attributes (Mitter, 1994; Belt, Richardson, & Webster, 2002) and women are
often considered cheaper and more flexible. These skills are often unrecognized and un-
acknowledged, but they are arguably gendered and indeed perpetuate the “gender ghetto
of women’s service work” (Webster, 2004). In this context, gender becomes embedded in
the restructuring of global service production and is mobilized as an economic resource for
companies.
Within the workplace, technology is also used to automate and facilitate work restruc-
turing as service sector employees interact as advisors, assisters, carers, or message-takers.
There are contradictory pressures as much of the work process is standardised and rou-
tinized, yet at the same time employees are required to satisfy the customer. Many of the
types of calls that are handled in India are low-level transactional enquiries, which are fairly
repetitive and with short cycle times (between 30 and 180 seconds). This intense activity
of call handling for overseas customers occurs at night, often during 8-10 hours shifts, six
days a week (Taylor & Bain, 2004).
In addition to these difficulties associated with workforce performance, employers within
the global service sector demand a constructed cultural identity, which may sit uneasily
with cultural identity within the host location. A key challenge that call centre workers face
in India is the neutralization of their diction and the cultural assimilation that is assumed
(Taylor & Bain, 2004; Poster, 2007a), as they adopt anglicised names while “smiling down
the phone.” Employees are expected to “act American” as they subsume different national
identities as part of their job (Poster, 2007a). Race, as well as gender, is embedded within
interactive service work. Mirchandani (2004) describes the psychological tensions that are
experienced as workers adopt Western identities and are expected to conceal the location
of the call centre. Such “emotional management” is not only used to smooth relations
and retain authority over clients who may be adverse to such outsourced communication
but also wield control over labor (Poster 2007a). Despite the assembly-line nature of the
work, employers try to instil the idea of professional status by enforcing “pink collar”
dress codes of skirts and high heels (Freeman, 2000). For many women workers within
the service sector these local and global tensions become embedded within their everyday
lived experience, varying between types of service work and across different locations,
depending on the contextual specificity.
Although skill requirements in this aspect of service sector work are not especially high
(keyboard and language skills), they are far higher than those required in the first phases
of feminised manufacturing jobs. As women become increasingly displaced in traditional

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 “MISSING WOMEN”: GENDER, ICTS, AND THE SHAPING OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 271

manufacturing jobs, it is unlikely that they are able to move to service industry jobs,
especially as these jobs tend to be numerically fewer. Service sector employers prefer
young, single women, with a good education (Hafkin & Taggart, 2001). Underlining the
assembly-line nature of the work, employers require flexible working with shifts, which
frequently prevents women with families from taking jobs during off-peak hours. So while
globalization may have brought new opportunities to young women with familiarity in
English in the new service sector jobs, it has imposed homogeneous and culturally specific
work practices and made large numbers of older women redundant in the manufacturing
sector.
As the service sector generally offers higher wages and greater job security than the
agricultural sector, these trends are seen to reflect broad improvements in the quality of
women’s employment (Mehra & Gammage, 1999). Yet, within the service industry itself,
particularly banking, finance, and insurance, women are predominantly based at the lower
paid and less skilled employment levels, with few occupying positions in management
(Standing, 1999). If women enter the workplace at the level of clerk there are limited
opportunities provided for training and career advancement (Hafkin & Taggart, 2001).
However, as ITES jobs come to reflect the movement towards the so-called knowledge
economy, skill requirements are advancing and demands on women workers will be higher.
Women may have made notable progress into highly skilled work such as software pro-
gramming in Brazil, India, and Malaysia, yet nowhere are these jobs held by a majority of
women; women working in these areas comprise a small, educated elite (Hafkin & Taggart,
2001).

5.3 An IT/ICT Workforce Profile

The IT/ICT workforce is a fairly new professional sector, particularly in many developing
countries, yet women occupy a minority of positions and gender inequalities that are well
established in many other sectors are being replicated in the IT/ICT industries (D’Mello,
2006). In India women comprise 19% of the IT workforce and 37% of employees in
ITES (www.hindubusinessline.com), while in Brazil, women make up 20% of the software
industry. They tend to be concentrated in particular occupational areas, which are generally
the lower skilled IT jobs related to data entry, and they comprise a small percentage of
managerial, design, and software personnel (Hafkin & Taggart, 2001). Yet, as increasing
numbers of women enter the IT or ICT professions, there is a drop in salaries, status, and
working conditions. The domain of masculinity becomes increasingly feminised.
In an ethnographic study of workplace practices in global software organizations,
D’Mello (2006) describes how employees, interacting across time and space, are con-
sistently required to work long hours to accommodate different time zones and frequently
operate in crisis mode with tight project deadlines while having to constantly update their
skills in response to rapid changes in technology. In addition to these demands, the mobile
nature of these types of occupations often works to women’s disadvantage as they experience
difficulties when faced with long hours, expectations of overseas travel, and participation
in informal social networks. Their domestic circumstances also result in women being
less inclined to “job-hop,” taking advantage of higher salary negotiations and benefits that
often come with new modes of employment. These material circumstances work against
women and, consequently, the majority of women IT workers carry out routine work, while
their male counterparts are appointed to analytical and managerial positions (Ahuja, 2002;
Hafkin & Taggart, 2001).
Information Technology for Development DOI: 10.1002/itdj
272 GILLARD, HOWCROFT, MITEV, AND RICHARDSON

The majority of the newly created technology and telecommunication jobs in developing
countries are in the private sector, but the lack of benefits available means that women are
unlikely to pursue these types of employment, instead having to opt for public sector work
that is more likely to offer childcare provision, flexible hours, and maternity leave. As some
governments legislate for such benefits, the full responsibility for providing them often
falls on private sector employers who are then inclined to discriminate against employing
women in order to avoid the financial cost of providing these services and benefits.
In a recent case study on network engineer training programs in Britain running the
Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) module (Gillard, 2006), it was found that
employment opportunities commensurate with their expertise were considerably restricted
for women in general, but particularly so for lone parents. Reiterated by Hafkin & Taggart
(2001), CCNA program managers, instructors, and students found that employers were
reluctant to recruit women, perceiving them as poorly qualified and lacking critical work
experience. Employers frequently maintained that not only were the supposed physical
and computational demands of the job too exacting but that it was too risky to permit
inexperienced personnel to tinker with the vital network infrastructure. Preferring to hire
men, this blatant stereotyped discrimination in skills recognition was also encountered by
female instructors and students in the Philippines, Romania, and Russia with job ads for
computer technicians frequently specifying male candidates (Hafkin & Taggart, 2001). In
the training program, however, women performed as well as, if not better, than their male
colleagues (Gillard, 2006).

5.4 A Spatial and Organizational Restructuring Profile

Increasing globalization and the pursuit of international competitiveness have made labor
costs more important in determining changes in the geographical location of production
and employment and also in determining which groups of people are employed (Standing,
1999). In the quest for increasing profit, new markets and new commodities are explored,
labor is sought in cheaper localities, and neo-liberal policies deregulate trade and financial
transactions. Globalization has facilitated a reduction of the core size of the firm as the
periphery is expanded to new outsourced sites in other countries (Benerı́a, 2001). The
development of ICTs, dematerialised products, and the standardization of work imply that
service work operations can take place at any time, any place, and anywhere.
However, there are significant reasons for the clustering of economic activity, including
cost advantage and incentives, the environmental infrastructure, and the availability and
ease of retention of people and skills. For example, regarding ITES, there are significant
city-based clusters with Manchester in the UK, Bangalore in India, and Brno in the Czech
Republic consistently appearing in the top five global locations. In India, call centres tend
to be based in Delhi and in Mumbai, the largest city and principal commercial centre
(Taylor & Bain, 2004). This type of labor clustering in urban marketplaces intensifies
competition among the already low incomes of the existing workforce (Heintz, 2006).
These low-income, unskilled workers become “geographically entrapped” (Castree, Coe,
Ward, & Samers, 2004) as they are more likely to change jobs than their residential location
and are less able to bear the costs of travel to distant areas, thus limiting the employment
opportunities that are available to them. Issues of spatial mobility are particularly pertinent
to women who lead intensely local lives and who may face difficulties as they try to
balance paid labor with non-paid domestic responsibilities. Thus, geographical location
Information Technology for Development DOI: 10.1002/itdj
 “MISSING WOMEN”: GENDER, ICTS, AND THE SHAPING OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 273

influences women’s ability to participate in the workforce because their mobility is much
more constrained due to familial obligations.
These politico-economic capitalist activities have social implications for both com-
munities and people affected by the mobility of international companies seeking greater
valorization of their products and services, with ICT productivity often at the forefront
of development initiatives (Gillard et al., 2007). Narrated as improving global intercon-
nectedness between geographically dispersed regions, ICTs may contribute toward degrees
of cultural homogenization through technical standards and implementation processes for
example, but as Perrons (2004) and D’Mello (2006) note, local variances exist and flourish.
Yet these differences are often airbrushed by the discourse of globalization and opportuni-
ties offered through ICTs as the zones and countries targeted for development are highly
regulated by the terms and conditions set by key international agencies such as the IMF and
the World Bank. Tied into financial contracts that change production, trade, and economic
activity and thereby affect social relations, the power behind these agencies lies with key
Western nation states and corporations.

5.5 An Informal Sector Profile

Two of the major changes to the spatial reorganization of women’s work arising from
the use of ICTs in developing countries are home-based work and teleworking, both of
which are based on subcontracting arrangements. ICTs are used to enable distance working
whereby employees or freelancers work either at a site that is geographically separated
from corporate headquarters (often located in a developed country) or work from within the
home. Many of these types of extended production networks, which emphasize “flexible
working,” allow corporations to legitimately pay lower wages while bypassing the provision
of benefits and protective legislation (Ward & Pyle, 2000).
A key feature of flexibilization has been a relative and absolute growth in non-regular
and non-wage forms of employment. Home-based work provides an important source of
employment throughout the world, especially for women, and home-based workers com-
prise a substantial proportion of the workforce in key export industries (Chen, Sebstad, &
O’Connell, 1999). Globally, the female work force is greater than the male work force in
the informal sector (Chen et al., 1999) yet gender differences are often ignored (Standing,
1999). A considerable gap exists in the literature on women’s employment in the informal
sector (Chen et al., 1999; Elson, 1999; Standing, 1999) despite providing more employ-
ment, more consistently, for women than the formal sector. Almost all women workers in
low-income countries such as Tanzania and Ghana are concentrated in informal sector em-
ployment, while in middle-income countries a large proportion of women are concentrated
here, notably 76% in Thailand and 80% in Turkey (Standing, 1999).
Teleworking is one of the most rapidly growing forms of flexible labor that is absorbing
far more women than men and involves less secure working conditions (Standing, 1999).
Informal sector employment is assumed to be compatible with characteristics that are
deemed stereotypical of women workers: irregular labor force participation, willingness
to work for low wages, and static jobs requiring little or no career advancement. By
outsourcing work to the informal sector, corporations reduce costs as women are employed
without fixed contracts and lack the rights and benefits associated with regular employment
based on company premises: comparable pay, promotion, pensions, training, unionization,
and paid leave. As noted, one of the paradoxes of industrialisation, is that homeworking
flourishes (Hafkin & Taggart, 2001).
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274 GILLARD, HOWCROFT, MITEV, AND RICHARDSON

These types of informal economic activities have traditionally been seen as a strategy for
economic survival for women and used in addition to formal labor and household activities.
In the literature during the 1970s and 1980s, the informal sector was seen as transitory
(Benerı́a, 2001), but the reality for many women is that this type of employment is far
from evanescent (Standing, 1999) and indications reveal that the informal sector is growing
in magnitude and significance as the formal sector shrinks (Breman, 2006). Conceptually,
the formal and informal sectors were viewed as highly separate, despite studies showing
levels of interconnectedness, particularly through subcontracting (Benerı́a, 2001). There
is an increasing trend whereby even large-scale enterprises have been informalizing their
labor process in the industrial and service sector in order to increase their competitiveness
and profits (Benerı́a & Roldan, 1987). In this respect, these two key areas of employment
are highly linked and connected as the formal sector intensify their involvement with
informalized production through outsourcing and subcontracting (Benerı́a, 2001).
Therefore, rather than be absorbed by the formal sector, informal economic activity is
on the increase and is instrumental to global competitiveness and profit maximization. The
informal sector is an integral part of the global market economy (Steans, 2000), being both
dependent upon and subordinate to the formal sector (Breman, 2006). Core firms engineer
a principal role in the generation of informality and poor working conditions via chains
of subcontracting and outsourcing. As Standing (2006) notes, a trend in many developing
countries is that so-called “formal” enterprises (modern, large) have been informalizing their
labor by outsourcing and by using more casual labor and contract labor. Consequently, it
has become increasingly difficult to identify where the formal market ends and the informal
begins. Given the feminization of the labor force over the last three decades, coupled with
the drop in formal employment, women have been central to these informal activities.

6. THE HOUSEHOLD: THE NEGOTIATION OF DOMESTIC WORK

In order to have some understanding of the interconnectedness of gender, ICTs, and devel-
opment, the totality of women’s working lives requires examination. Much of the gender
and development research has emphasized the need to redefine work to incorporate paid
labor in the formal sector, paid informal sector work, and unpaid labor in the household
(Ward & Pyle, 2000). Households take different forms in different societies, yet the major-
ity of women in the world work in two to three of these categories, aptly called “the triple
shift” (Hossfield, 1990).
Domestic chores generally remain the responsibility of women whether they are managed
by family members or paid personnel. This public/private nexus of work organization
is underresearched outside of feminist scholarship. Despite a common assumption that
equalitarian households are on the rise, many women have to sacrifice their career or
employment choice to manage these practical caring tasks. While the heterosexual married
couple format remains the homogenizing norm in many societies, familial units are changing
partly in response to shifting social aspirations and greater acceptance of varied sexual
identities but also to absent parents. The male breadwinner assumption is turned around by
the rise in dual-earning and single parent families, both in Europe and in many developing
countries such as the African continent where HIV/AIDS related-illnesses, for example,
have decimated not only families but also whole communities. This restructuring of the
household has implications for employment patterns, mobility, opportunity and well-being.
As intensified and anti-social hours cut into private lives, the affluent can afford to buy
Information Technology for Development DOI: 10.1002/itdj
 “MISSING WOMEN”: GENDER, ICTS, AND THE SHAPING OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 275

or contract domestic services to save time or effort (Wajcman, 1998) but the poor cannot
do so. Drawn from the lower strata of societies, in the West this domestic labor profile
increasingly reflects a high proportion of Eastern European, Central and South American,
or Asian women (Hafkin & Taggart, 2001).
The commodification or negotiation of domestic work presents a key site of tension
for public roles and responsibilities (Wajcman, 1998; Perrons, 2004). Better paid men
may abdicate commitment, perhaps believing their financial contribution is sufficient or
justifying ad hoc obligation to the household(s). Few women have such choice or flexibility,
and only those with stronger bargaining positions, such as income or robust extended
networks, are the ones who tend to have greater determination of their own and their
children’s interests (Perrons, 2004). However, while it may be possible to negotiate fallback
strategies with the aid of these and other support mechanisms, it cannot be assumed
that women have complete control over their wage. Kinship ties and sexual politics may
requisition all or part of their income, restricting their bargaining power and increasing their
dependency on additional wages as public or private health, education, and water services,
for example, escalate in cost.
Domestic structures and practices are recalcitrant to change and contribute considerably
toward unequal gender relations in the household and in employment, and their cultural
variances affect women and men in very different ways. In the quest for economic survival,
family members disperse to productive cities or countries, and as the household fluidly
adapts, it is women who bear the brunt. For if patriarchal processes are challenged by
the growing globalization of the feminization of employment in local market settings,
women may be subject to stigmatization as “loose,” neglectful of their domestic duties, and
too independent for their own good as they shape and negotiate their public employment
(Perrons, 2004; D’Mello, 2006). These and other cultural practices not only weaken their
economic power but also contour the diversity of their lives by influencing degrees of effort
required to negotiate their tenuous social positioning and bargaining scope.

7. CONCLUSION
In this article, we have attempted to illustrate some of the tensions in the globalization
discourse of democratic equality and opportunity through ICT production. We have built
on the conceptual research framework put forward by Walsham and Sahay (2005) by
highlighting the importance of gender. This is not simply to be considered as an additional
dimension, but rather we hope that the centrality of gender as a universal organizing
principle of all human activity is evident from our discussion. Drawing on the gender and
development literature, we have highlighted the neglected topics of (a) gender, identity,
and the tensions between the home, work, and community; (b) the evident contradictions
of global capital demanding feminization of work; (c) the gendering of the knowledge
economy and women’s engagement with ICTs, alongside continued absence of women in
the design and control of ICTs; and (d) increasing standardization with de-personalization
and “cultural cleansin” of identity.
Gender analyses that argue for a pro-ICT approach to development do not generally refer-
ence this wealth of academic literature and simply equate employment with social, political,
and economic empowerment (Huyer, 2003; Huyer & Mitter, 2003; Mitter, 1994, 2003).
Yet little concrete evidence is provided on the actual outcomes of employment, and while
they do acknowledge that more research is required (Hafkin, 2002; Huyer & Mitter, 2003;
Information Technology for Development DOI: 10.1002/itdj
276 GILLARD, HOWCROFT, MITEV, AND RICHARDSON

Mitter, 2003; Huyer, 2005), they hold that it is better to have employment than not. This
constitutes a highly instrumental and decontextualized approach to women’s empowerment
that is closely aligned to ICT market-led growth, and their argument is essentially about
fitting women into the current relations of productivity. Reflecting current social, political,
and economic trends, and over-reliance on governments, donor agencies, and the private
sphere to champion gender equity, top-down policy initiatives take time to implement and
can be ad hoc in practice (Crewe & Harrison, 1998; Hafkin, 2002; Gillard, 2006).
Therefore, detailed qualitative and quantitative studies are needed, preferably under-
pinned by a feminist political economy perspective. We advocate making women visible
and acknowledging the experiences and complexities of women’s working lives. This means
considering how women’s work in the formal, informal, and domestic spheres are shaped
by changing global patterns in the feminization of employment. Understanding that gender
relations are socially constructed allows recognition that the development process has af-
fected women and men differently. To find the “missing women” requires valuing women’s
skills and contribution and questioning organizational practices that disregards issues of
pay, working conditions, domestic situations and social injustice, and inequality gener-
ally. It suggests research that investigates variances and tensions in local socioeconomic,
political, cultural, and personal arrangements as well as in relation to ICT capitalist produc-
tivity. This means highlighting the informal as well as formal employment and considering
home-based work of all kinds.
Rethinking work and life from women’s perspectives can offer alternatives for reorganiz-
ing and improving human existence and activity. Realigning public work to the “rhythms
and pulses” of private life may begin to provide concrete heterogeneous ways in which
women are supported and empowered to engage more fluidly with their families, their
locales, their employment, and their particular circumstances.

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Dr. Hazel Gillard is currently a guest lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political
Science in the Information Systems and Innovation subgroup of the Management Department, plus a
shiatsu and auricular acupuncture therapist. Her research interests cover the philosophy of technol-
ogy and gender inequalities, the socioeconomic and political critical dimensions of technologically
induced change, and the application of traditional Chinese medicine to shiatsu therapy. She has
taught extensively in a variety of educational institutions over the past 30 years, covering areas
such as Return to Learning Adult Continuing Education, IT/ICT Literacy, Web Design and more
recently Information Systems and Business. She has also worked in local government, managing the
implementation of and training in in-house housing applications.
Debra Howcroft is professor of Technology and Organisations at Manchester Business School and a
member of the ESRC-funded Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC). Broadly, her
research interests are concerned with the drivers and consequences of socio-economic restructuring in
a global context. She is co-editor of the Handbook of Critical Information Systems Research: Theory
and Application (2005, Edward Elgar Publishers), Social Inclusion: Societal & Organizational
Implications for Information Systems (2006, Springer-Verlag), and Foundations, Philosophy and
Research Methods (2008, Sage Publications).
Dr. Nathalie Mitev is a senior lecturer at the London School of Economics, Information Systems
and Innovation Group, Department of Management, and has held previous lecturing positions at
Salford University and City University in the UK. She has French postgraduate degrees, an MBA
and a PhD. Her research career initially concentrated on information retrieval, human-computer
interaction and library automation and then moved to the organizational and social aspects of IS.
She has published on IS implementation issues in small businesses, the health, tourism, travel, and
construction industries. Her theoretical interests are the social construction of technology and she
has applied actor-network theory to analyzing IS failures and she is particularly interested in how
social constructionist approaches contribute to critical IS research. She has published in major IS
journals and conferences (EJIS, JIT, ITP, JEUC, TIS, HICSS, ECIS, ICIS, IFIP8.2 and IFIP9.4) and
has been track chair for various conferences (IRMA, ICIS, DSI). She is a visiting professor at Aarhus
University Business School in Denmark and participates in the CEMS (Consortium of European
Management Schools) doctoral consortia.
Dr. Helen Richardson is a senior lecturer in information systems (IS) and joined the University of
Salford in 1998 after a varied career including working in the field of social care and running a
research and training unit promoting positive action for women at work. She works in the Research
Centre for People, Work and Organization and is engaged in critical research in IS including issues
of gender in the ICT labor market and the global location of service work.

Information Technology for Development DOI: 10.1002/itdj