Inte rnatio nal Jo urnal o f Sc ie ntific & Eng inee ring Re se arc h Vo lume 3, Issue 3 , Marc h -2012 1

ISSN 2229-5518

The Proposal of a framework for implementation

of present Government’s “Digital Bangladesh-

2021” involving & integrating of Rural Women

Mohammod Abul Kashem, Momotaz Begum, Sumaya Kazary, and Shamim Ahmed

Abs tractThe term “Rural women” is very signif icant for its successful imp lementation of “Digital Bangladesh-2021”. Almost 50% of the total populations are w omen in our country. This is very important and signif icant that three-f ourth of the total w omen is f rom rural settings, among three-fourth most of the w omen spent a lif e not only rural setting but also as aborigines. The present study of rural w omen made an eff ort to determine the present status of access to ICT by the rural w omen. For this purpose f ew selected villages w ere taken w ith representative sample through interview and question answ er session. Majority of rural w omen have no concept and vision of digital Bangladesh and ICT netw ork. But it is very interesting and unbelievable that each rural w oman is interested about ICT use, no t only use but also 95% rural w omen are fully interested to take ICT as a prof ession. This paper explores the role of ICTs in empow ering Bangladesh rural w omen, through the implementation of Digital Bangladesh-2021.

Inde x TermsRural Women, Digital Bangladesh, ICT, Co mputer Literacy, Educational Level.

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1 INTRODUCTION

UR national poet Kazi Nazrul Islam wrote- “The Good done by the civilization, half created by man and res ts by the women.” This is an internal statement about the
development of human civilization. From the dawn of the civi- lization women and men worked together to make the future brighter. Now it is very important the 50%, “the other half” which can perform an important role about the development of human civilization. But if we want to take our mission of ICT and fill up our vision of “Digital Bangladesh” with devel- opment of civilization the rural women play an important and actual role. But numerical speaking, these expressions are

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Mohammod Abul Kashem has been serving as an Associate Professor and Head of the Department, Department of Computer Science and Eng i- neering (CSE), Dhaka University of Engineering & Technology (DUET), Gazipur, Bangladesh. Field of interest: Speech Signal Processing. E-mail: drkashem11@duet.ac.bd

Momotaz Begum has been serving as a lecturer, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Dhaka University of Engineering & Tech- nology (DUET), Gazipur, Bangladesh. Field of interest: Advanced Data- base System, Software Engineering . E-mail: momotaz03_duet@yahoo.com

Sumaya Kazary has been serving as an Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Dhaka University of Eng i- neering & Technology (DUET), Gazipur, Bangladesh. E-mail: kaz- al_duet@yahoo.com

Shamim Ahmed has been serving as a lecturer, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Dhaka International University (DIU), Dhaka, Bangladesh.He is also an M.Sc. in Engineering Student, Depart- ment of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Dhaka University of Engineering & Technology (DUET), Gazipur, Bangladesh. He got B.Sc. in engineering degree in CSE in the year of 2010 from DUET, Gazipur, Ban- gladesh. Field of interest: Digital Image Processing, Artificial Neural Net- work, Artificial Intelligence & Visual Effects. E -mail: sha- mim.6feb@gmail.com


most appropriate for the rural Bangladesh. According to cen- sus 2001 men preponderates women in the ratio of 105 but the sex ratio is 123.1 and 140.29 in the metropolitan areas and mu- nicipalities respectively.[3] Since Present Government pledged to develop a Digital Bangladesh by 2021 , it has given a great hope to the citizens of Bangladesh.
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be used to close the gender gap by creating new jobs for impove- rished women. ICTs can also be used to promote basic literacy and education for women and girls, provide job training and prepare women for careers in the ICT sector as well as to en- sure health and safety. We know ICT has a huge amount of profession and task, lots of area for developing and earning money. So it is very easy to use ICT and makes Bangladesh as a “Digital Bangladesh”. The specific objectives of the study are:

a. How to Integrate and Involve Rural Women into

ICT?

b. To determine the important for involving of Rural

women to ICT for making “Digital Bangladesh”.

c. To determine the interest of Rural women to ICT

and ICT profession.

d. To assign rural women who are interested and what

type of training need for them.

e. To specify some challenges for Rural Women to In- tegrate and involve to ICT.

2 BACKGROUND STUDY

The prices of inputs (fertilizer, pesticide), outputs (agricultural products), transport (timing of trucks going to urban markets) and marketing opportunities. Exa mples: In Costa Rica, women

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farmers, who are small coffee growers, use telecommunica- tions to obtain marketing information from central coopera- tives in the capital that have computer links to sources. The links provide information on national and international coffee prices. In rural Mexico, cooperative offices use microcomp u- ters to get weather updates, urban market prices for local agri- cultural produce, and other information that helps local fa r- mers decide when to harvest crops and tran sport to the city.
The access to markets and business -related information; ecommerce: connecting small artisans to markets; support to innovation; support to small farmers Examples: In Peru, “Quipnet” helps market small-scale eco-tourism facilities run by women by e-commerce through the Internet. In India, the SATCOM program provides information by satellite to small - scale women entrepreneurs who are members of the Self- Employment Women’s Association (SEWA).[3]
In our country in rural areas there is no scope to get the infor- mation about agricultural commodities, health services and business purpose through use of ICT.

3 METHODOLOGY

This paper is based on primarily data collection and personal experience has been inserted for deeper understanding. R e- cently we conducted a study two villages named Bolda, Vuru- lia Dist: Gazipur, Bangladesh for taking interview, and observ- ing their life style and their relationship with ICT and “Digital Bangladesh”. The interview was made on about ICT and “Di g- ital Bangladesh” with their interest, opportunity and problem. Each Rural womens was very interested and gave answers of each question very nicely. At the same time we discussed with the chairman and councilor of that area.

4 AN OVERVIEW O F ICT SECTION IN B ANGLADES H

In the section the overall situation of Bangladesh with respect of ICT are shown-

Table 1. The Tabular Represe ntation of overview of ICT

5 INFORMATION GATHERING AND ANALYSIS

At the same time it describes the Present Circumstances of Bangladesh. At this stage, we have surveyed over 500 of women in two villages’ situated at Gazipur by questionnaires and by our collected information to identify the quality of ru- ral women in Bangladesh we implement the program. We’ve developed a software tool for simulating by ASP.NET and C
#; In that case our findings are as follows:

5.1 Grafical Repsentation of Present Situation: After collect- ing data the results were represented graphically.

Education Level and computer literacy of Rural Women: Edu- cation is the backbone of a nation or a n ation cannot prosper without education. In ICT section educa tion is very much im- portant for every people. The following two tables represent the education status and computer literacy situation of rural women respectively.

Table 2. Education Level of Rural Women

Total population

142.319 million

Total population Male

71.255 million

Total population Female

71.064

Rural population

106,224,900

Population Below Poverty

Line

36.3% (2008 est.)

Population growth rate

1.292% (2010 est.)

Key Economics Sectors

Garments, vegetables’,

Medicine, ceramic product, jute etc

Internet Hosts

68,224 (2010)

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for ICT.

45.0%

40.0%

35.0%

30.0%

25.0%

20.0%

40.0%

20.0%

30.0%30.0% 30.0%

20.0%

20.0%

60.0%

50.0%

40.0%

30.0%

20.0%

10.0%

0.0%

50.0%

55.0%

40.0%

20.0%

0.0%

5.0%

10.0%

20.0%

15.0%

10.0%

5.0%

0.0%

Illiterate A ble to

S ign

10.0%

P rimary S ec ondary

Televis ion No IC T Item C omputer Mobile

P erc entag e B olda P erc entag e V urulia

6 PROJECTED RESULT

P erc entage B olda P erc entage V urulia

Table 3. Computer Literacy Level of Rural Women

We assigned some points for every attributes and this session shows the result of the program i.e. who are the qualified women or not and which women need training or not.

7 PROPOSED M0DEL

In upper triangle indicates the objectives to implement the proposal such as (1) IT infrastructure, (2) Women and Gover- nance requirements, (3) Facilitating information, communica- tion, IT services and Distribute ICT Services.
The lower triangle includes the actions according to the objec- tives that are H/W, S/W, and Network: (1) develops, test, and deliver. (2) Information collect and application control (3) ICT requirements: Monitor, control or support IT services. (4) Terminal access, file transfer, computer mail.

Use of ICT items: The use of ICT Item is help to Rural Women

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In the center circle there are six tasks which should be impl e- mented by government directly such as (1) Justification & Evaluation (2) Quality assign & plan (3) Delivering local gov- ernment & other group (4) Attain & kit (5) Supervise & Esti- mate and (6) Assign Standard (operating system, database), Network (Local area network, Wide area network), Processor (Single user, Multi user)

7.1 Organizational:

Framework:

CHALLENGES OF ICT USE FOR RURAL WOMEN’S

Technical problems: According to the circumstances of Ban- gladesh some technical problem is occurred to integrating R u- ral Women in to ICT. Following are some of the key con- straints:

No proper classification and qualification of Rural for

developing ICT

Price of ICT requirements for Rural Women

Lack of internet connectivity and electricity

Lack of others source of Electricity

Lack of Infrastructure facility of ICT

Lack of Training Program Provide

Lack of local and community‐ related content in local

languages continues to be a major barrier in women’s
use of ICT for economic empowerment

Lack of the involvement of other ICT channels (radio, television, mobile etc.)

Social problems: Integrating & Involving Rural women, it is also necessary to reduce social problems because social problems are deeply rooted in society. Some of the key social problems are as follows:

Traditional attitude

Lack of education and training (particularly rural and deprived women).

Poverty and huge domestic and agricultural work.

Rural men are not interested to involve Rural women into ICT

Rural cannot take steps without any permission of her

family

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8 POLICY MAKING AND CONCLUSION

To remove technical and social problem some policy is very necessary to make a road map and it is very important to sta- ble the road map. ICT is a core sector for making “Digital Ban- gladesh-2021”. If you want to achieve the goal of “Digital Bangladesh-2021” it is very important to increase ICT know- ledge based education, ICT based training program, develop- ing new ICT based product etc specially for rural women at a time whole country. Based on the study some strategic rec- ommendations for an overall strategy and discusses some sp e- cific action items for better access to ICT by rural women in Bangladesh.

Education level is very important for Rural women without education it is fully impossible to access ICT but we have to ensure that the education is Based on ICT. So in every rural village stable an ICT education center and ICT training centre.

Make proper classification and qualification of Rural women for developing ICT

Categories all the Rural Women create point and

grade and take systematic steps.

The government should take necessary steps for creating work opportunities leading to increase per capita income of the rural women. So they can be brought to the mainstream of the information and communication technology policy of the country.

Workshop and training centers for Rural women

Collaboration among government, development or-

ganization, NGOs and other stakeholders need to be encouraged in finding solutions to the common prob- lems through application of appropriate ICT services in rural areas where the govt. sector still lagging far behind.

To make ICT more useful and meaningful, particula r- ly for rural and poor women, relevant information and tools need to be provided to address women’s needs and demands Availability of electricity, trans- port and security may also influence the us e of ICT.

Radio and Television programmes can be developed to educate women on various development issues, i n- cluding the various uses of ICT, thus increasing awareness and knowledge of ICT’s uses

In Medical Science an actual doctors at first analysis the dis- eases of her/his patient then he/she can able to takes a proper and logical step to prevention the diseases and this is the key of proper success of a doctor. Same as it is very important to analysis each” Rural Woman” according to her personal qual i- fication, personal interest about ICT sectors, their personal problem and circumstances and takes a proper and logical steps to Integrate and involve them to ICT. It is very Scientific steps for the Honorable Government or any others private Organization who are interested to Integrating and involving Rural women in to ICT especially for the mission of “Digital Bangladesh-2021”.

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