Collected news stories on the impact of the APC Gender Evaluation Methodology (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 social levels.

By using the GEM methodology, practitioners in Africa, Latin America and Asia uncovered results they would not have obtained if they had not included gender in their project planing and research. A series of articles demonstrates how GEM is changing the lives of women and the development of inclusive ICT practices. The stories were published on the APC website as well as the GEM practitioner’s website.

Africa

• GEM in Hard Times: Sectarian violence in Nigeria can be beaten

• Telecentres in Uganda do not appeal to rural women

• A national cyber-strategy for Congo, which integrates women

Asia and the Pacific

• Culture is a bigger barrier to Bangladeshi girls going online than lack of money or computers

• How one Indian academic is putting the spotlight on discrimination against women in e-government

• Internet, schoolchildren and rural Pakistan: How to get community buy-in including for girls

• Rural e-governance in India: Women struggle to take part

• Why ‘real men’ don’t use telecentres in the Philippines

Latin America and the Caribbean

• Afro-Colombian women fight prejudice by embracing technology

• Peru’s farmers lack information: Why are telecentres being underused?

The Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP) developed GEM to facilitate the process of learning about using ICTs for gender equality and to increase consciousness on the possible negative impact of ICTs on women’s lives if gender and ICT issues are not considered from the start. As such, gender evaluation methodologies can be used to investigate whether ICTs are being used in ways that change gender biases and roles and do not simply reproduce and replicate existing ones. As more and more of today’s development work and money is channeled into projects that employ ICTs, their effects on women are of great importance.