IT in developing nations makes women and poor people happier

A study by BCS, the UK Chartered Institute for IT, concluded that the introduction of technology to developing nations disproportionately improves the happiness of women and poor people. This runs contrary to the anti-IT-development argument that runs, "The world's poor need civil rights and food, not phones and laptops."

It found that women in developing countries, and people of both sexes with low incomes or poor education, were most influenced emotionally by their access to technology.
It is partly because women tend to have a more central role in family and other social networks, said researcher Paul Flatters of Trajectory Partnership, which conducted the research on behalf of the BCS.
"Our hypothesis is that women in developing countries benefit more because they are more socially constrained in society," he added.

Technology linked to happiness, study claims

(Image: Connecting India, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from t1tan's photostream)

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Anonymous

“This runs contrary to the anti-IT-development argument that runs, “The world’s poor need civil rights and food, not phones and laptops.”"

No it doesn’t. They still need civil rights and food. IT apparently makes them very happy. That doesn;t mean they don’t need food and civil rights.
mdh

First: I assuming better communications lead to better organization of food distribution and better communication of common grievances (allowing organization towards rights).

Second: Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, give a man a broadband connection and WOW and he will not eat at all.
rebdav

This seems to parallel my experience with the homeless in the US. network access is a huge value for the investment.
Boba Fett Diop

Another example of this is the impact that wireless communications have had in parts of west Africa. In places like Ghana, a class of “Market Ladies”- women who build and run successful businesses primarily using mobile phones- has emerged.
Pag

Being poor doesn’t mean starving. Most developing nations have enough food for their people (although not as generously as rich nations do). Once basic needs are met, giving tools to improve quality of life and productivity (such as cellphones) is best since it helps people become independent.
- Adze
  
  I once saw a stand-up comic riff on this issue (this was about 10 years ago); he mentioned that in the news, one of the biggest market growths for cellular networks was in third world countries, often where no landlines existed. He performed a hypothetical cellphone conversation with himself using a bad sub-continental accent:
  “Hello, how are you?”
  “I’m starving!”
  “Me too!”
  “Bye!”
  - WalterBillington
    
    Aid works mildly, and gets siphoned off by, for example, the Lord’s Rebel Army. Food gets eaten. Or rots.
    
    I don’t get it – communication is a basic human function, and yes, I’m talking talking and SMSg, not Facebooking or World of Warlockery Unicornery.
    
    How about the conversation continues … ” the local witch doc is wrong again about the rain! Let’s stop giving him our goats!”
Anonymous

…the UK Chartered Institute for IT, concluded that the introduction of technology to developing nations disproportionately improves the happiness of women and poor people.

I’m torn between “Well, duh. New avenue for social mobility.” and “Well, duh. This conclusion reached because social exclusion/women’s issues are the shibboleths required to open the taps for all that delicious third sector grant money.”

Who do I see about getting some money for old rope like this?
WalterBillington

This is good news – and probably replicates the first-mover nations’ experiences, but amplified. Everyone loves comms.

More, it can be useful – and leverage social networks for massive use, like helping in disaster zones – see yesterday’s Danger Room report – http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/05/preparing-for-the-next-haiti-with-maps-texts-and-tweets/

And as for civil rights and food – comms help people get both.

Civil rights with no communications, as an extreme, ain’t worth a suck on a dog’s ass, and although dictators can hamper comms, they can’t extinguish completely.

As for getting food – rapidly some smart kid in a social network will spread word about resource access and availability.

All in – a great thing, and so flipping obvious that I’m annoyed a group of people have spent time and money writing a paper.

“Anti-IT-development argument” – sounds suspiciously stone age to me.
- dreamfish
  
  In terms of the ‘anti-IT’ attitude, developing countries find that very patronising and possibly an strategy by the developed world to keep developing nations in a subordinate position.
  
  Consequently, when they’re only offered food or agricultural tools but not technology they complain to rich nations saying “We don’t want to be where you were twenty years ago – we want to be where you are now, especially in terms of technological capability”.
- dculberson
  
  You would be surprised at the number of anti-IT development people even among the tech literate. Almost every time there’s been a post on the XO or other low cost machine intended for developing nations, there’s been comments opposing it for exactly the reasons that Cory noted. (“They need food not laptops!”) That’s true even on BoingBoing.
Anonymous

Wait, wait. If IT actually helps women MORE because their role in society revolves more around communications, how is their increased happiness disproportionate? They’re happier in relation to other groups because it benefits them more.

Duh?
WalterBillington

Who talked about ipads? We’re talking basic tech here. I really think the poor of Calcutta couldn’t give two curried hoots about tech envy.

Access to tech also squashes the time it takes to gain capability in a certain field down to your capability to learn it – rather than fighting to access the intellectual property in the first place.
Nadreck

One of the biggest examples of increased happiness through technology is the Filipinos usage of SMS messages. Most of the text messages send in the world in any given day are from the Filipino Diaspora connecting with their family back home while they toil away in country “X’ to support them.
Anonymous

What this article and the blithely pro-tech-as-essential-to-development rhetoric ignores is the degree to which “happiness” is a social construction. People in the developing world are enjoined by advertisers to have the same desires as those in the privilege West – what’s missing is the basic necessities that underpin Westerners’ ability to spend on luxuries, which is often how we use tech (e.g. few people actually need as powerful a device as an iPhone or a Blackberry, even if we need a cell for business purposes).

I don’t mean to completely ignore the genuine ways in which tech can enhance lives in developing nations – for instance, banking by cell phone is ideal for people living in isolated villages who previously had to trek miles to the nearest branch to deposit their money. That this also causes new hurdles (i.e. paying to power the device, maintenance of the phone, danger of theft, etc.) does not completely override the major benefits to people’s quality of life that can accrue from this tech. But I think two things need to be considered here: A) What works in the West won’t necessarily be how people use tech in the developing world, and B) Promotion of tech shouldn’t altogether replace efforts to improve basic services that guarantee quality of life (e.g. you need to be healthy – say, have access to clean drinking water – in order to be capable of learning how to use new technologies, for example).
das memsen

This doesn’t really disprove “food not laptops”; it’s simply that people unfortunately still connect their self-esteem to the idea that they fit in, are normal, etc. When you see that Americans and Europeans are running around with their iShit all day, you bet everyone else feels like a loser until they get their iShit too. It’s not that their lives ACTUALLY are improved so much as their perception of their worth has improved, hence they feel better. Who can blame them- I’m sure I’d feel the exact same way in their shoes- but it doesn’t ACTUALLY prove that everyone needs broadband. In fact, many of us who do have enough to eat see it from an opposite perspective- technology can be a trap, and being free from that and living a simple, uncluttered life is actually BETTER than walking around with your cell phone all day. Oh, the irony of experience.

In the end, food is a necessity, self-esteem is a necessity, but owning an iPad is not a necessity. Sorry, tech-lovers.
- dculberson
  
  Improving self esteem and increasing happiness is an actual improvement. (Or, to use your term, an ACTUAL improvement.)
  - das memsen
    
    Improving self-esteem based on a false premise isn’t an actual improvement, just a temporary one. Someone gives you a 2002 cell phone, you’re happy for a day, until you see an ad for a blackberry, then you’re unhappy, till someone gives you that, and you’re happy again for a few days until you see the iphone in someone’s hands. That’s not true happiness; the false premise is that if you have the same stuff as your neighbor, you will be happier.
    
    I agree that, since we live in a society that has made computers and connectivity important in order to function, giving people those tools is helpful for survival. I love the idea of teaching developing nations the same skills i’ve been able to garner here in media and computers. I want a more even playing field all around. I’m just saying, none of that has to do with being happy. Cory’s post claims they are happier, and that’s just not true.
    - Dewi Morgan
      
      I think it’s deeply arrogant for anyone to think that just because something’s become such a natural part of our lives that we use it casually and without much thought, people in developing countries will only have casual uses for it.
      
      Rather than, say, forming a business out of it. Through your mobile phone, you’re suddenly turned into the smartest guy in the village. You’re suddenly the modern witchdoctor, with access to weather reports, to animal care and husbandry knowledge, to medical knowledge, to a world’s worth of tips on increasing crop yields.
      
      You can communicate with people many day’s walk away, so you can tell people it’s not worth trekking over to the market at village A, since they had a bumper crop with all the rain, and instead go to village B, where the floods wiped out most of theirs.
      
      You can talk to banks, and put separated families in touch with each other.
      
      You don’t need a business plan, or startup funding from an angel investor. You’re “the guy with the phone”. Everyone in the village knows that, and they will all come to you. The only people they love more are the guy with the truck, and the guy with the ox and plough.
      
      To claim that the point of technology is about keeping up with the Joneses is completely missing the point, and sadly suggests someone who actually BELIEVES Apple’s advertising.
      
      When you’re poor, technology isn’t for posing. It’s a tool, something that makes something possible or simple, that was previously complex or impossible. And tools make their owners happy. “The guy with the chainsaw” is a popular and happy guy, too.
    - dculberson
      
      Cory did not claim it, BCS claimed it. Given that they have actually done research into it, and are a research institution, I’m going to trust their conclusions a damn sight more than your supposition. That’s not a dig at you, it’s just stating the obvious – someone with data and analysis to back it up is more convincing than someone with a hunch.
      - octopod
        
        “Given that they have actually done research into it, and are a research institution, I’m going to trust their conclusions a damn sight more than your supposition. ”
        
        hmm. weird. such touching faith in research conducted by clearly not wholly unbiased ppl. RIAA, FRC, NRA etc all tell me things. but. umm. like, the IT ppl tell me that IT is win, I’m like, whatever.
      - dculberson
        
        Certainly every group has a bias and that has to be kept in mind, but research beats a hunch until proven otherwise.
- ikegently
  
  I think it is important to remember that access to technology, especially connectivity, is a powerful vehicle for empowering people to improve their economic situation. Email and cellphones are becoming a necessity for entrepreneurs in all parts of the world. So tech can have a transformative impact of peoples lives in the way that aid often does not. Now, that is not to say that if someone is starving, give them a cellphone. Acute situations require immediate action with life sustaining help. But to break the persistent cycle of poverty, access to technology really can impact lives.
Anonymous

Communication does more than make people happy, it’s a vital tool for both economic advancement and civil rights.

Why does it seem like some people are against this kind of self-improvement? Real progress happens from the inside, no matter how much foreign aid you send over.
Anonymous

I think you will find that without a certain minimum level of civil rights and food, IT doesn’t do a whole lot of good.
WalterBillington

Food not laptops! How about just food and laptops. The tech literate kids of today will help develop the infrastructure solutions of tomorrow to develop their areas.

I say, with apologies for any sky-godly taint – teach a man to fish.

And if with his iphone he can geo-co-ordinate with his mates where a good shoal is, so much the better.