Women in general allocate more time¹ to the household, often in a critical period of their career. This lowers their productivity in the external labour market, and by lowering learning-by-doing in remunerative skills, lowers future earnings as well. Perceptions and power magnify the distortions. Others doubt women’s ability, but women doubt themselves, and this self-doubt further harms their prospects.In these circumstances, ICT and the Internet offer great benefits to society and to women. They can reduce this waste of potential human resources since they facilitate flexi-time activity, lower location constraints, and make it feasible for women to maintain and upgrade skills.

This above assumption implies that participation of women in this technology should rise relative to that of others, if ICT uniquely compensates for some of women’s special disadvantages. There is evidence that this is happening. For example, Morahan-Martin concluded in 1998, “the Internet has been dominated by males since its inception. Although use of the Internet by females has increased dramatically in the last few years, women and girls worldwide still use the Internet less and in different ways than males. Low Internet use by females not only gives them less access to information and services available online, but also can have negative economic and educational consequences”. But just two years later a survey based study (Rickert and Sacharow, 2000) recorded that, in the first quarter of 2000, American women overtook men as a percentage of Internet users. Since America was one of the earliest countries where the Internet spread, this portends future trends elsewhere. In 2003, study in the US, commissioned by IBM, that compared women and men business owners with respect to ICT usage, discovered that women exceeded men both in the use of new technology and the way it was used to assist businesses. Their lead varied from 4 to 11 percent²

The women’s movement recognizes the importance of the Internet, but fears are expressed that women may be left behind and end up as have-nots. The reasons are that women may have less online access than men do, because they have less time, money, control, learning opportunities, more of other commitments, and they give priority to others’ needs. The majority view is that gender bias and misperceptions must first be removed for women to be able to reap the full potential benefits of the new technologies³. The analysis suggests that the Internet will give women more time, educational opportunities, and money even if they continue to give priority to others’ needs. These changes can take time and have to battle entrenched prejudices, whether those of women or their employers. Therefore, special conditions and policies are required to aid the process.

I turn to examine the fears expressed in the women’s literature, and the extent to which events have validated them.

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