Photo by BabaSteve. Used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

In the west, we’re spoiled. Women are an integral part of society, running board rooms, Fortune 500 companies, households, raising children; often doing everything (or more) that their male counterparts do. In much of the rest of the world this is not the case. If women in general aren’t abused and harassed, they are ignored throughout the greater parts of the societies in which they live. If you thought Hillary Clinton had it bad, just ask any woman living in ‘the developing world‘ and they’ll tell you some stories that would make you sick to your stomach.

Kiva fellow Taryn Goodman had this to say about her trip to Tororo, Uganda:

A few weeks ago there was a special article about a town in Uganda in which the men do nothing but drink, gamble and nurse their hangovers while the women work and tend to the house, children and their needy husbands. The article speculated that the men needed therapy to deal with their lack of motivation resulting from the extreme poverty they are living in. Upon mentioning the article to my associates at work, they said that one of MCDT’s branches, Tororo, suffers from a similar situation and that I should go visit. With that, I found myself making the three and a half hour drive to Tororo from Kampala for a visit…..

The women were just as amazing as was their singing and dancing. They face so many obstacles beyond husbands who do not pull their weight including domestic violence, HIV/AIDS (hence the infectious disease trucks) and famine. The woman are subject to a high level of domestic violence in this area due to lack of food and high incidence of alcoholism, for when their husbands come home after drinking and are hungry, they are often upset with the lack of food and beat their wives….

The drinking and subsequent alcoholism has also caused the increase in HIV/AIDS infections as there is a high level of casual sex. The ramifications are horrendous as one woman mentioned she cares for her brother’s children who are infected as he and his wife have passed. In addition, a large number of the women are infected and even have children who have passed due to the disease.

There’s a famous saying that goes: “Old woman,” a young woman asked, “what is the heaviest burden a woman has to bear?” The old woman answers, “Young woman, the heaviest burden a woman has to bear is to have no burden at all.”

Taryn illustrates a long standing but unfortunate trend. In most male dominated societies, women are often sidelined from participating in the workforce not because of lack of opportunity but because of the needs of the men and children around them. There are some real examples of what an untapped resource women truly are, especially when it comes to the IT industry…

Tami Sussman, regional director at Integr8 IT, Africa’s leading 400+ people strong ICT managed services provider, has been selected as a potential recipient of the African ICT Achievers ‘Top ICT Business Woman in Africa’ Award…

Sussman’s election in the Top ICT Business Women in Africa award is based on recognition for her contribution to the business and industry at large.

“It is an honour to be recognised for this prestigious award. Professionally it goes a long way to further cement the company’s roots in South Africa and Africa. As a fully established and BEE local entity it helps to entrench our proactive managed service and emphasize the value of our nerve centre to provide knowledge transfer to local skills in support of both African and global markets,” says Sussman.

“Opportunities are plentiful for women in the ICT sector today. There is really nothing stopping South African women from entering the ICT sector and excelling at it. There is no glass ceiling in this sector and women have an equal opportunity to men to become company CEOs, directors, software developers or CIOs. I think women in the ICT sector should make an effort to take up positions where they have increased decision-making powers or where they are at the cutting edge of technological developments.”

I’ve heard that so much that it sounds like rhetoric. My girlfriend always says “nothing happens in a vaccum” so it’s rather silly to suggest that the only thing keeping them from embracing new opportunity is free will. There’s a larger problem in the insecurities and stubbornness of the status quo (men) to accept them.

More than 90 percent of the engineers who make Internet systems around the world are male. These are often highly lucrative positions that any trained worker could do. Studies like this one from Wired and this one from The Register often come to the same conclusions: “There aren’t enough Women in this field? Why? how can we attract more? Yet the industry remains as insular, male dominated and chauvinistic as it ever has.

Chauvinism is as old as humanity itself, and it’s a universal truth that is slowly relenting as women are empowered through technology and the increasing abundance of communication tools. Groups like the Global Peace Initiative of Women are taking great measures to have women included in discussions about the larger problems of humanity. That said, I don’t think the answer is to solely focus efforts on ‘empowering women’ (a cause CARE recently began championing), but rather I feel the best way to address this is through the education of everyone. Societies won’t change because you give women money and loans and make them the patriarchs of the family. If the culture doesn’t welcome it, those women will suffer in many other ways that are hard to fathom. The mentalities of entire communities need to be challenged and this can only be done in a mutually inclusive discussion.

About the Author: Jonathan Gosier is a software developer, writer and social entrepreneur. He currently lives in Kampala, Uganda where he incubates and invests in East African entrepreneurs as the CEO of Appfrica Labs. He's also a 2009 TEDGlobal Fellow.

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