YouthSpark - Empowering Girls Through Technology - An Assessment

YouthSpark is a programme devised by the Microsoft India in collaboration with NASSCOM to teach young girls and women in the age group of 16-24 about computer coding and programming. It is envisioned that through this exercise, girls and young women can be empowered and they can join the technological work force. The programme takes in its ambit especially the girls and young women from the underprivileged sections of the society.

On 26th of May 2016, the 4th workshop under the aegis of this programme was held in New Delhi to engage the young girls into computer programming related activities through interesting games and other interactive exercises.

Four young girls and women were on the stage, Rekha from Delhi, Anima from Badgarh in Orissa, Srila from Tamil Nadu and Geetanjali from Ghaziabad. Amongst the guest speakers were present S Chandrashekhar, a former IFS Officer and now working with the IT Industry, M. Panidhi, Head of Diversity and Inclusion and Regional Head, Karnataka NASSCOM and Nigar Fatima from the MHRD and Director of Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan.

Divergent Views

It was interesting to see that the young women on stage and the Microsoft representative had one kind of story to tell about women's empowerment, while the representatives of the government had another kind of story to tell, showing divergent trends in thinking regarding women's empowerment in the society.

The 4 young women narrated in the accepted framework of the International discourses on gender sensitisation and empowerment of the oppressed people. This followed the narrative of most Indian women as oppressed and being denied the right to study computer science and through Microsoft's endeavour, struggling to come out of this oppression and learn coding and programming and acquiring confidence.  Thus, Rekha talked about how she was told by her father and brother that she was a girl and hence, not fit to study computer science and she had to lie to escape from home to learn coding at a Microsoft training centre. Now she trains other young girls. Similarly, Srila talked about how she had never seen the metropolitan world of Delhi and coming from a lower income group how she had never thought she could learn computer science, but she could come to Delhi and learn coding through Microsoft's efforts and now she teaches others in her social group in Tamil Nadu. Geetanjali said she was from a small town like Ghaziabad (not realising that Ghaziabad is now part of the National Capital Region and is as sophisticated as any average area of Delhi) and how she was the only girl in a large class and had to fight the domination from the boys in her class and finally began to train others in her age group. Anima talked about how she worked with the handloom weavers of Orissa, who learnt to recreate the textile designs on computer and transfer them to their handwoven textiles by her efforts.

In a complete contrast to the above model of narrative, M. Panidhi talked about diversity being a need for not only women but also for men and especially stressed the fact that men needed this training in the thinking of women's empowerment as much as women did. He also reversed the narrative of the four women on stage and gave some startling statistics to show that women had in fact always dominated the world of computers.

The most striking were MHRD Director of Madhyamik Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Nigar Fatima's comments, though some of them could have been framed differently. She stressed the fact that these 300 girls in the hall were actually not under-served, because they still lived in and around Delhi and they at least had a computer and electricity at home and went to school. In contrast, many areas in India didn't have electricity, let alone computers and many children in these areas were not fortunate to go to school. She said that these girls should take this as a mark of good fortune and should dedicate themselves to learn well the skills they were being taught.

I absolutely agree with what she said above.

One of the students asked her how they could learn computer science properly as these courses were quite expensive and their parents couldn't afford them. To this, Nigar Fatima's remarks sounded somewhat harsh as she told the girl that they should not make excuses such as this, that if they wanted to learn, they could find a way and they could go to Google and find a cheap online course and there were enough programmes being taught in government institutions that were low-cost. Hence, instead of inventing excuses, they should make efforts to find the right information and have the determination to learn this skill.

It appeared that she meant well and said these things with the best of intentions, but she could have said them in a different manner. Instead of talking about students making excuses, she could have pointed out the various government programmes and given the same information about online courses in a more encouraging manner. This would have gone down well with the students. Especially coming from a government representative, a somewhat more congenial approach was required here. She also didn't seem to understand that having a computer at home was different from acquiring skills in coding and programming. Not everyone who has a computer at home knows coding. On the whole, the workshop came through as if the students were being trained in one kind of worldview regarding empowering of women through technology, while the government representatives had a different attitude towards this endeavour.

Gender Empowerment through Technology - What Does it Mean?

Watching the discussion going on stage, some thoughts came to mind, which I would like to share here. It's not necessary that everyone will agree with me, but then, that's what diversity of ideas is all about.

First, what do we really want to achieve through gender empowerment? Is it the radical feminist worldview that is very anti-men that we are being taught through the ideas of gender empowerment? It is important to understand that gender empowerment and equality is not really the same as having conflicts between men and women. Believing in gender equality doesn't necessarily mean becoming anti-men. The way a few of the girls on stage talked about "fathers and brothers" being against their sisters and daughters learning computer skills was actually reflective of women turning against men, not of gender equality. The truth is - and more so in the non-Western societies - that women's rights are often suppressed more by women than by men. The conflicts in our societies are more between mother and daughter, sisters-in-law and mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, than between father and daughter, brother and sister and so on. The reason for this is that even today, in many non-Western societies, women gain their status and affluence in the society through the men in their lives and hence, women in a family often compete against each other to get close to a man who holds status, power and wealth, so that they can enjoy the power, status and wealth coming from this man. In such a situation, women often turn against other women in an orgnisation or family and women become the worst enemies of women. I am not exonerating the men here, but if a study is made along these lines, there would turn out to be enough fathers and brothers defending their daughters' and sisters' right to come forward and get educated against the wishes of the senior women of their families, who would rather have the younger women reduced to the status of free housemaids. Of course, there are also enough men suppressing the women they deal with, but patriarchy is often also perpetuated through the agency of women. This is something that has never been studied by the Western feminist theoretical discourses.

My point in saying the above is that the usual Western discourse of men vs the women as a narrative of gender empowerment does not really hold true in the non-Western societies, especially in India. The need is to make young girls understand that anyone who holds power - whether it's a senior woman or a man, can either be progressive and liberal and encourage her to get educated, or can use his/her power to restrain her freedom. She should not think that only men can do this. Even women can do this. Hence, the need for her is to develop an independent thinking and assert herself against all odds.

Next, merely learning computer programming is not enough. The real question is what she does with it. Does she become a money-generating machine for her family with no control over her income? Does she merely save her salary to accumulate dowry for her marriage, which is no more than a business transaction? Does she use her income to merely get a groom in arranged marriage because she is earning money? If these are the outcomes, then she is really not empowered in any sense of the word. Again, the need here is to make her understand that earning money through technology is not enough. The important point is to be progressive and modern in her outlook and to use her money for her own betterment and for the betterment of the society.

Above all, no empowerment is complete unless the person getting empowered can make independent decisions of her life with no control from the society. Unless this stage of independence is achieved, where not only can she take independent decisions about herself and her family, but also provide sensible and wise guidance to the men in her life, she is not truly empowered.

In a truly gender-empowered society, men seek guidance, leadership and insights from the women in their lives and not the other way round.

In the entire programme, I didn't see any discussion on these aspects of empowerment. Unless these aspects are integrated into the programmes of this type, these young people are merely going to become money-making slaves of a technologist society, not truly empowered, free thinking individuals.