of the G7 Countries. OECD Science,
Technology and Industry Working
Papers 2000/2, OECD Publishing.
Maryam Mustafa ( maryam.mustafa@
cg.cs.tu-bs.de) is an assistant professor
at the Lahore University of Management
Sciences (LUMS), Lahore, Pakistan.
Amna Batool ( amna.batool@itu.edu.
pk) is a Teaching Fellow at Information
Technology University, Lahore, Pakistan.
Agha Ali Raza ( agha.ali.raza@itu.edu.pk)
is an assistant professor at Information
Technology University, Lahore, Pakistan.
© 2019 ACM 0001-0782/19/11
launched voice-based community forums accessible
over feature phones that
function as social networks and allow women to
anonymously create, enjoy,
and share content.
1 Such
social inclusion for women
has allowed them greater
connectivity and access to
entertainment, education,
and health opportunities.
Although our work
has revealed essential
guidelines for designing
for women in patriarchal
contexts some challenges
remain. One open challenge is designing applications for shared mobile
phones keeping in mind
privacy for women in patriarchal contexts. Almost all
applications, like mobile
banking, email, Facebook,
or Whats-App work on the
assumption of a single
user associated with a SIM.
This is not true in Pakistan,
where one phone/SIM is
used by an entire family.
How then, do you design
and ensure privacy for
each user? Similarly, given
the harassment on voice-based social platforms that
women face, how do you
encourage female inclusion
on these platforms?
References
1. Ali, A. et al. Baang: A viral
speech-based social platform for
under-connected populations.
In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM
SIGCHI Conf. Human Factors in
Computing Systems (Montréal,
Canada, Apr. 21–26, 2018).
2. Arun, S., Heeks, R. and Morgan, S.
ICT initiatives, Women and work in
developing countries: Reinforcing or
changing gender inequalities in South
India? Institute for Development
Policy and Management, University of
Manchester, 2004.
3. Bahrini, R. and Qaffas, A.A. Impact
of information and communication
technology on economic growth:
Evidence from developing countries.
Economies 7. 1 (2019), 21.
4. Batool, A., Razaq, S., and Toyama, K.
Maternal complications: Nuances in
mobile interventions for maternal
health in urban Pakistan. In
Proceedings of the 9th Intern. Conf.
on Information and Communication
Technologies and Development.
ACM, 2017.
5. Fajembola, T. Abiye: Safemotherhood:
A case of leadership in turning the
tide of maternal mortality in Nigeria.
Nigerian Health J. (2011).
6. Mechael, P. Mo TECH: mhealth
Ethnography Report. Grameen
Foundation, 2009.
7. Mustafa, M., et. al. Digital financial
needs of micro-entrepreneur women
in Pakistan: Is mobile money the
answer? In Proceedings of the
2019 ACM SIGCHI Conf. on Human
Factors in Computing Systems
(Glasgow, Scotland, May 4–9, 2019).
8. Pradhan, R.P., Arvin, M.B. and
Norman, N.R. The dynamics of
information and communications
technologies infrastructure,
economic growth, and financial
development: Evidence from Asian
countries. Technology in Society 42
(2015), 135–149.
9. Schreyer, P. The Contribution of
Information and Communication
Technology to Output Growth: A Study
A key issue faced by women
in Pakistan is the lack of digital
social connectivity. This is
because all social media is based
on the assumption of literacy
and Pakistan is a country with
an overall literacy rate of 58%;
the literacy rate of women is 48%.
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