Mattering Matters: Agency, Empowerment, and Mobile Phone Use by Female Microentrepreneurs

Abstract

This article attempts to enrich our understanding of the role that mobile phones play in the empowerment of women in the developing world. We adapt and explicate an innovative social psychological concept, “mattering,” embed it in the literature that examines the impact of mobile phones on social development outcomes, and consider the utility of mattering for the ICT4D community. Mattering is the perception that others are aware of, interested in, and depend on us. Based on a sample of 335 female microentrepreneurs in Chennai, India, we created a valid and reliable measure of mattering and its three dimensions. Mattering was predicted by (1) entrepreneurial expectations, an element of an individual's mindset; (2) social use of mobile phones; and (3) the perceived benefits of mobile phones for maintaining business networks. Findings suggest that mobile phone use plays a significant role in contributing to female entrepreneurs' perception that they matter.

Keywords:

• mattering
• empowerment
• women
• mobile phones
• ICT4D

Acknowledgement

This research was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada.

Notes on contributors

Han Ei Chew (PhD – Michigan State University) is Research Fellow at the World Institute of Development Economics Research - United Nations University in Helsinki, Finland. Dr Chew has been researching the impact of information and communication systems since 2008. His recent projects include an international mobiles-for-learning project in collaboration with UNESCO and a mobile phones impact study in Coimbatore, India, funded by the International Development Research Centre, Canada. Dr Chew has also participated in research funded by the United States Department of Commerce, the Kellogg Foundation, and the Swiss International Development Cooperation Agency.

P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan (PhD – Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur) is Associate Professor at the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He researches and teaches about production and consumption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) with a special focus on India. Dr. Ilavarasan is a recipient of the Outstanding Young Faculty Fellowship Award at IIT Delhi and Prof. M.N. Srinivas Memorial Prize of the Indian Sociological Society. His specific research interests are Information and Communication Technologies & Development (ICTD) [Use of Mobiles & other ICTs by women microentrepreneurs in India]; Information Technology Industry in India [Labour, R&D Centers of MNCs, Inter-firm linkages, Clusters & Sub-national Policy]; and ICTs & Government [Electronic Governance]. His publications and other details are available at: http://web.iitd.ac.in/~vignes/

Mark R. Levy (PhD – Columbia University) is a professor in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies & Media. Dr. Levy is the author or co-author of numerous scientific articles and ten books, including The VCR Age; Global Newsrooms, Local Audiences; Mass Communication Review Yearbooks 5 and 6; and the award-winning Communication in the Age of Virtual Reality. Dr. Levy has been editor of the Journal of Communication and an associate editor of Human Communication Research and Critical Studies in Mass Communication. His research has examined the audience for mass communications and the users of new communication technologies. Most recently, Dr. Levy has been studying information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), most especially mobiles for development (M4D). Supported by a grant from the International Development Research Centre of Canada, Professor Levy has just completed a study of ICT use and its consequences among microentrepreneurs in Mumbai, India.

Notes

1. The idea of mattering can also be traced to frameworks emerging from the symbolic interactionism school in sociology. According to this school, people create societies through interactions with others by attaching subjective meaning interpreted mutually (Stryker, 2008). Thus, in the case of mattering, a person might feel important due to his or her perception that others are perceiving him or her to be important.

2. The assumption of independent sampling was met. Assumptions of normality, linear relationships between pairs of variables, and the variables being correlated at a moderate level were also met for the given sample.

3. RMSEA, root mean square error of approximation; CFI = Comparative Fit Index. Three measures of goodness of fit were used: the overall chi-square test of fit; as Byrne (1989) cited; RMSEA as Browne and Cudeck (1993) cited, and CFI as Hu and Bentler (1999) cited.

4. The six variables in Model 2 also significantly predicted business growth, F(6, 328) = 21.37, p < .001, adjusted R² = .268, a medium-sized effect (Cohen, 1988). Business growth was operationalized as the year-over-year percentage by which microenterprise revenues changed as reported by the microentrepreneur.