Smart phones and rural women  

Those who would in the past travel regularly by train are used to the spectacle: A woman or a girl all of a sudden turning the panel of her unfurled umbrella towards the rail compartments and hiding herself from the gaze of male passengers. To foreigners, it was an extraordinary scene. But it had been the part of culture in the country for ages. Before the advent of train, the womenfolk would meet strange males coming from the opposite direction. Here, too, they would be eager to let the males pass by them. They maintained a modest distance from the male passersby, their face turned aside.

Compare these unique scenes with their modern versions. The other day a Dhaka daily newspaper showed the photograph of a group of rural young and middle-aged women. Such photographs are nothing unusual in the Bangladesh media. Rural women working in paddy fields, poultry and dairy farms, fishing and engaged in small entrepreneurship are the staple of dailies and weeklies, and also TV footage - but definitely not the photographs of beaming women flaunting their smart phones. Compared to the village males, the relatively literate womenfolk did not take longer to get used to the cell-phones. Once they laid their hands on the 'mobiles', they spent little time to graduate to the outlets of other electronic marvels. Those included PCs, followed by advanced mobiles and mobile money transaction. But their being drawn to the cheap or moderately priced smart phones appeared to be something phenomenal.  When lots of city-dwelling males are still far from becoming mobile-friendly, affluent rural women have made smart phones a necessity of their life. Apart from entertainment and news, hygiene tips, weather and agricultural information etc, the private community radio channels help them keep abreast of the latest global situation. Smart phones are the medium.

There are dozens of electronic communication outlets coming from the smart phone. Making of calls and SMS (short message service) dominate these communications. They are followed by face-booking, video-chatting, still and video photography etc. On being equipped with all these electronic communication means, the village women can safely announce their break with the inhibition and taboo-centred past. That the women in Bangladesh villages are fast becoming assertive and socio-culturally aware has a lot to do with the digital revolution now sweeping the country. The smart phone is a stepping-stone into this vast e-world.

Bangladesh villages in many regions are far-flung. Letters have long become outdated due to their slow speed. Telephones also do not attract people like before. All this has created space for the mobile phone network in vast swathes of the country, especially in the Char areas. People in these lands, particularly those belonging to the mid-river Char settlements, have found in smart phones a window wide open on the outside world. When it comes to the womenfolk with their husbands working overseas, smart phones provide them with a trusted medium linking them with each other. On the International Women's Day on March 08, both the progress and adversities facing rural women came up for lengthy discussion. In spelling out women's achievements, their fledgling entrepreneurship received generous spotlight. But the driving force that has helped broaden their activities remained in the background. Existing in the form of e-technology, this fillip, i.e. smart phones, deserves premier focus.

Operating a smart phone doesn't require higher education. Primary-level education is enough. It's surprising that alongside teenage and younger girls, half-literate housewives are showing their excellence in using smart phones. The ease and dexterity with which the country's village women today operate these phones speak eloquently of the great untapped potential in them. They can use the phone in the management and operation of myriad types of ventures.

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