Les TIC ont-elles un sexe ? Les perspectives africaines en TIC et genre à la lumière des approches théoriques en communication

Abstract

In this contribution, we will review gender- and ICT-related theoretical issues in the light of the positions developed by feminist research. An inventory of research in communication science will introduce the issue, laying emphasis on methodological and epistemological considerations. First, the universalist and differentialist approaches will be addressed and light will be shed on issues relating to their proponents’ positions on the issue of technology and information and communication technologies (ICTs). Second, the path taken subsequently by the constructivist approach will show how the reopening of the gender and technology categories is used to reconsider fruitfully the two previous approaches. The methods of the subsequent theoretical and methodological readjustment will be brought to light. Third, the ICTs and gender issue will be analysed in terms of its relationship to development, i.e., in so-called contexts of resource scarcity that happen to be located in so-called developing countries whose relationship to Western feminist research are already longstanding. We will show that the ICTs category is too wide to be used efficiently for the analysis, and that instead, we need to proceed as follows: first, distinguish ICTs according to the technical skills they require on the part of the user; next, consider that, in order to be able to analyse properly the practical effects of the problematisation, we need to take into account the various forms of accessibility (economic and geographic in particular); and last, that it is only in a third and final stage that the analysis of uses/non-uses will make it possible to think the improvement of women’s living conditions. In the concluding section, we will show that the way in which the issue of ICTs, gender and development is problematised makes the themes supportive of the universalist approach, despite some theoretical and strategic differences. A critical openness will enable us to lay the groundwork for an alternative research agenda that remains sensitive to the reduction of inequalities and the improvement of the living conditions of women and, more generally, of ICTs users in developing countries.