The Role of Ict in Women’s Empowerment in Rural Bangladesh

Rural women in Bangladesh have limited access to resources and public spheres due to socio-cultural restrictions. Women suffer from severe discrimination, and it is thought this is heightened due to a lack of access to information. Information communication and technology (ICT) is a potential tool that can reach rural women and enrich their knowledge. This paper discusses women‟s empowerment in terms of perceptual change in rural villages in Bangladesh after ICT intervention has been introduced by Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). Since empowerment is a complex phenomenon to measure because of its multidimensional aspects and its relationship with time as a process, the methodology used in this research was an integration of qualitative and quantitative methods. Using a structured questionnaire, data was collected from women in two different villages where ICT projects have been introduced. The change in women‟s perception after using ICT was compared with changes in women who did not use ICT. The results indicate that ICT intervention changed women‟s perception in a positive direction in one village but it did not change in the other village.