The digital divide within the women’s movement in Ghana: Implications for voice and inclusion

ABSTRACT

With the rise in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), activists and scholars debate their effect on social movement inclusivity. Those in favor argue ICTs improve access to and voice within movements. Those against argue that the digital divide exacerbates existing inequalities. Yet, these debates often hinge on basic access to ICTs and do not consider the usefulness of their application. Drawing on over three years of fieldwork and 24 in-depth interviews among activists within the women’s movement of Ghana, West Africa, our findings complicate a binary notion of access. We highlight how a more effective, as opposed to formal, access to ICTs is needed for inclusion within social movements. We further demonstrate how organizations facing ICT restrictions often choose not to use them. This is not because activists lack motivation or understanding of ICT potential, but because they make pragmatic decisions to advance their priorities using more reliable means. This study demonstrates the enduring relevance of the digital divide, the importance of access quality for ICTs to increase social movement inclusion, and how movement culture can compound or challenge the exclusionary effects of ICTs. We conclude with suggestions to reduce inequalities within social movements.

KEYWORDS:

• Inequalities
• voice
• inclusion
• ICT
• digital divide
• Ghana

Acknowledgments

Please note that the authors are listed in reverse alphabetical order. They contributed equally to the manuscript. The paper benefited from feedback given during conference presentations at the African Studies Association, the American Sociological Association, and the Collective Behavior and Social Movement Section Meetings – in addition to an invited talk at the University of San Francisco. The research data collection was made possible through the Fonds Québécois de las Recherche sur las Société et la Culture (FQRSC). All research was approved by the Research Ethics Board at McGill University: REB#3-0603. We are grateful to all of the Ghanaian activists, who gave their time and knowledge to this project.

Funder details

Fonds Québécois de las Recherche sur las Société et la Culture (FQRSC).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. External inequalities include discrimination based on patriarchal structures and values. Internal inequalities include racism and Western-centrism among activists.

2. Note that ITU statistics may be high due to supply-side sampling (Gillwald & Mothobi, 2019).

3. The latest wave of the Population and Housing Census, from which these figures are derived, is currently underway by the Ghana Statistical Service. However, regional and national proxies included throughout this paper suggest that disparities remain stark.

4. For an overview of the women’s movement from the 1990s to mid-2000s, see Fallon (2008) and Tsikata (2009).

5. The sample also includes one organization each from Navrango and Bawku, smaller towns in the Upper East region.

6. See Appendix 1 for more information on the organizations.

7. Although more organizations in Accra focus on advocacy, we argue this is in part due to context, as explained later in the paper. Instead, we find the most salient distinction that emerged between organizations was their level of effective access to ICTs.

8. Women and children in the north face particular challenges. Patrilineal kinship networks mean that inheritance, property, and social support structures flow through the father’s family (Fenrich & Higgins, 2001; Manuh, 1997). In the event of a father’s death, the estate is passed to his family members, a category that often excludes the widow (Fenrich & Higgins, 2001). Although children of the deceased are eligible for inheritance, if children are young, assets will fall to an inheritor who may neglect the children (Yarney et al., 2015). While women across the country bear the burden of gender inequality, the economic and social conditions of the north intersect with gender to result in greater vulnerability for women and girls in the region.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kathleen M. Fallon

Kathleen M. Fallon is a professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University. Her interests lie at the intersection of political sociology, international development, and gender studies. Specifically, she focuses on women’s social movements, women’s rights, women’s health, and democracy within sub-Saharan Africa, as well as across developing countries more broadly. Her research has been published in such journals as the American Sociological Review, World Development, Social Forces, Gender and Society, and Mobilization.

Sophia Boutilier

Sophia Boutilier is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology at Stony Brook University. Her research conceptualizes solidarity from a position of privilege, investigating how privileged actors confront their complicity with oppression. This model foregrounds how emotions motivate behaviors and can - but do not necessarily – work to reconcile inequalities. Sophia also researches sexual violence in collaboration with Shift: the Project to End Domestic Violence at the University of Calgary, Canada.