Why "Real Men" Don't Use Telecentres in the Philippines

This Association for Progressive Communications (APC) article focuses on this question: How can telecentres be a leveller for women's and men's access to the internet, given that Filipino men primarily choose commercially run internet cafes over the more socially focused telecentres where games and pornography are not allowed?

As detailed here, a study by the Molave Development Foundation looked at 2 rural telecentres using the APC's Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) in an effort to understand how Filipino men and women use the internet differently and why telecentres are seen as mostly female spaces. With funding from the National Computer Center and APC, Molave led pilot studies in Binalonan, a land-locked agrarian community, and Bato, a small fishery-based community. Molave is the current chair of the Philippine Community eCentre Network (PhilCeCNet), a multi-stakeholder learning and collaborative community for eCentres.

APC interviewed study coordinator Angelo Juan Ramos of PhilCeCNet. He explained that the research showed the women in rural areas use community eCentres (CeCs) and internet cafes for social purposes like chatting with friends and family abroad. They see the internet as a tool for them to reach out to others and to learn more about the world. Men, on the other hand, generally use the internet for games and sometimes pornography, so they don't really feel the need to go to CeCs, where games and pornography are not allowed. In addition to these types of "entertainment", they tend to see computers as a technical device that can be used for work and earning money. As a result, men spend more time in internet cafés than in female-dominated telecentres (if at all). In fact, focus group discussions in the community of Bato revealed that men who do go to telecentres might be viewed as gay or "not real men". Juan Ramos said that the study indicated differences within different age groups. For instance, young boys went to the telecentre when they wanted to do school work and to the cyber cafés for games and chatting with friends. Male seniors wanted to be trained and become themselves trainers to other seniors; thus, they seemed to be more comfortable in telecentres than in cyber cafés.

The Commission for Information and Communication Technologies (CICT) of the Philippine government will use the results of this study to develop a strategy for addressing gender issues, raising awareness of the existence of the CeCs, and encouraging men to use them.

In the interview, Juan Ramos also reflected on the effectiveness of GEM, which is a guide to integrating a gender analysis into evaluations of initiatives that use information and communication technologies (ICTs) for social change. Ramos talked about the process of piloting GEM in Binalonan and Bato and using it throughout the whole process, from planning and design to implementing and monitoring and evaluating. He characterised GEM as being helpful for "understanding the communities that the telecenters are trying to reach and understanding that the services they provide have to consider gender, age, work, perceptions of the community and values within the community. As a result of using GEM, telecentres are becoming more focused on the users....[W]e have come up with indicators to monitor and evaluate the CeCs, that were collected separately for male and female users....[W]e are making sure that when we conducted focus group discussions with the different groups in the community, that we have separate sessions with males and females....We also learned a lot from the qualitative approaches GEM suggests, using tools like digital stories and case studies....We found that in many cases, it's good to have both quantitative and qualitative results, to ensure that the end-users of the evaluation process get the entire picture of the situation, from all possible angles and viewpoints."

Juan Ramos indicated that the next step for the CeC movement in the Philippines is integrating gender issues into the training and capacity building of CeC knowledge workers, and in getting telecentres and CeCs to learn how to effectively monitor and evaluate. "We'll be using GEM for these purposes because we feel it is a very effective monitoring and evaluating tool."

Click here to view Juan Ramos' digital story "Telecentres Are for Sissies".