Mobile phones and Gender Empowerment: Enactment of ‘Restricted Agency’

The Capability Approach, as developed by Amartya Sen, has been criticized for an overly individualistic approach, while simultaneously being re-framed in alignment with the dominant social structure. We situate individual agency within the frame of social power structures, examining agency and empow...

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Main Authors: Hoan, Nguyen Thi, Chib, Arul, Mahalingham, Ram
Other Authors: Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Language:English
Published: 2017
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/85572
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/43803
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-855722020-03-07T12:15:48Z Mobile phones and Gender Empowerment: Enactment of ‘Restricted Agency’ Hoan, Nguyen Thi Chib, Arul Mahalingham, Ram Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information The Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD '16) ICT4D Mobile phones The Capability Approach, as developed by Amartya Sen, has been criticized for an overly individualistic approach, while simultaneously being re-framed in alignment with the dominant social structure. We situate individual agency within the frame of social power structures, examining agency and empowerment gained by mobile phone usage from 26 Vietnamese foreign brides in Singapore. We use an intersectionality perspective from gender studies to find that, while facing multiple grounds of discrimination from the dominant group, the women constantly negotiate at the intersections of gender, ethnicity and social class, leading to two active strategies for positive well-being and empowerment: Essentialization of gender and Aspiration. The mobile phone was found to be an active agent in facilitating their aspiration for individual changes, autonomy, and more powerful decision making roles in domestic and social domains - a variety of communicative practices developed their capabilities. On the other hand, Mobiles also mediated the enactment and practices of the foreign brides' essential beliefs of their own idealized femininity and traditional gender roles, in contrast with the dominant development discourse of women's empowerment. The socio-cultural contexts influencing processes of technological appropriation is discussed from the perspective of development, particularly re-framing Western notions of gender equality within the agentic framework. Accepted version 2017-09-27T03:04:12Z 2019-12-06T16:06:17Z 2017-09-27T03:04:12Z 2019-12-06T16:06:17Z 2016 Conference Paper Hoan, N. T., Chib, A., & Mahalingham, R. (2016). Mobile phones and Gender Empowerment: Enactment of 'Restricted Agency'. Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, 5-. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/85572 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/43803 10.1145/2909609.2909671 en © 2016 The authors, published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This is the author created version of a work that has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, published by ACM on behalf of the authors. It incorporates referee’s comments but changes resulting from the publishing process, such as copyediting, structural formatting, may not be reflected in this document. The published version is available at: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2909609.2909671]. 9 p. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
country Singapore
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic ICT4D
Mobile phones
spellingShingle ICT4D
Mobile phones
Hoan, Nguyen Thi
Chib, Arul
Mahalingham, Ram
Mobile phones and Gender Empowerment: Enactment of ‘Restricted Agency’
description The Capability Approach, as developed by Amartya Sen, has been criticized for an overly individualistic approach, while simultaneously being re-framed in alignment with the dominant social structure. We situate individual agency within the frame of social power structures, examining agency and empowerment gained by mobile phone usage from 26 Vietnamese foreign brides in Singapore. We use an intersectionality perspective from gender studies to find that, while facing multiple grounds of discrimination from the dominant group, the women constantly negotiate at the intersections of gender, ethnicity and social class, leading to two active strategies for positive well-being and empowerment: Essentialization of gender and Aspiration. The mobile phone was found to be an active agent in facilitating their aspiration for individual changes, autonomy, and more powerful decision making roles in domestic and social domains - a variety of communicative practices developed their capabilities. On the other hand, Mobiles also mediated the enactment and practices of the foreign brides' essential beliefs of their own idealized femininity and traditional gender roles, in contrast with the dominant development discourse of women's empowerment. The socio-cultural contexts influencing processes of technological appropriation is discussed from the perspective of development, particularly re-framing Western notions of gender equality within the agentic framework.
author2 Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
author_facet Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
Hoan, Nguyen Thi
Chib, Arul
Mahalingham, Ram
format Conference or Workshop Item
author Hoan, Nguyen Thi
Chib, Arul
Mahalingham, Ram
author_sort Hoan, Nguyen Thi
title Mobile phones and Gender Empowerment: Enactment of ‘Restricted Agency’
title_short Mobile phones and Gender Empowerment: Enactment of ‘Restricted Agency’
title_full Mobile phones and Gender Empowerment: Enactment of ‘Restricted Agency’
title_fullStr Mobile phones and Gender Empowerment: Enactment of ‘Restricted Agency’
title_full_unstemmed Mobile phones and Gender Empowerment: Enactment of ‘Restricted Agency’
title_sort mobile phones and gender empowerment: enactment of ‘restricted agency’
publishDate 2017
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/85572
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/43803
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