Smart phones, women’s empowerment and domestic violence prevention in Bangladesh

Date of Award

11-1-2024

Thesis Type

PhD

Document Type

Thesis

Divisions

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Department

Department of Social Administration and Justice

Institution

Universiti Malaya

Abstract

The role of smart phones as an awareness tool for women’s empowerment to address violence have received constant attention in the field of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) in recent years. Growing evidence from different contexts have revealed that access to smart phone contributed both in women’s development issues and violence prevention. Given that Bangladesh is one of the nations with the highest rates of domestic abuse worldwide, this qualitative phenomenological study examined how Bangladeshi women’s access to phone played a role in their empowerment to respond against domestic violence. The study employed semi structured in depth interviews with married women from urban areas in Bangladesh, who have access and ownership to smart phones and utilized thematic analysis for analysing the data. The major findings of this study revealed that smart phone access has benefitted women in their information awareness related to violence prevention and overall personal and professional developments. However, despite women’s smart phone access and information awareness, gender roles affect technology integration in domestic violence prevention. Such empowerment is constrained by women’s stereotyped belief in patriarchal society and lack of trust on help seeking agencies in Bangladesh. The study argues that women’s empowerment and disempowerment are influenced by the presence of an empowering individual in their lives to feel ‘Power Alongside’ to fight against violence. The findings of the study contributed to the current debate on gender, ICT and women empowerment, by representing a dialectic of gender oppression and access to smart phone as a solution to violence prevention.

Comments

Thesis (PhD) – Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Malaya, 2024.

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