Socio-Economic Impact of ICT in Women’s Empowerment to Foster theProcess of SDGs 2030

Abstract

This study explores whether the affordability and penetration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for women lead to women‟s empowerment in low- middle income countries, specifically Pakistan. The study also examines the way ICT impacts women‟s empowerment and can increase the process of attaining Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study explores the opportunities ICT offers to enhance women‟s empowerment further and lists the barriers faced in this regard. The bibliometric and scientometric analysis based on the Web of Science and Scopus databases indicates that there is limited research on the current topic for Pakistan. The thesis aims to examine the impact of ICT on women‟s autonomy in the case of developing countries from 2000-17. The study applied the Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) technique and found that ICT positively affects the female labor force participation rate. The study also found that the other control variables, GDP growth and Government expenditure on education, have a positive association with women‟s empowerment. Furthermore, the results show that ICT has a vital role in empowering women, and it is also crucial for fostering the process of the SDGs Agenda 2030. The study also explores the relationship between ICT and women‟s decision- making power in Pakistan by using data from Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2017-18 to examine the determinants that affect women‟s decision making power at the household level. The study‟s results showed a positive and significant association between ICT and women‟s empowerment. In addition, other socio-economic and demographic variables that are used as control variables like employment status, current age of woman, residence, level of education, wealth index, v and the number of alive sons has also showed significant associations with women‟s decision-making power. In the end, thesis empirically examined the impact of ICT on women‟s say in household decision-making at the provincial and regional levels in Pakistan. The dataset from the Household Integrated Economic Survey (HIES) 2018-19 has been used for this study. The Logit model and the Classification and Regression Tree (CART) results highlight the significant and positive impact of ICT on women‟s say in household decision-making power, which is the most important predictor. Furthermore, by applying the CART technique, it has been found that Punjab is ahead among all provinces, and Balochistan is, unfortunately, the furthest behind in achieving the SDG 2030 agenda. In a nutshell, these three studies have established through panel data analysis of 51 developing countries and Pakistan using the latest data from WDI, PDHS, and HIES and found, that ICT plays a vital role in enhancing and augmenting women‟s empowerment. The achievement of Agenda 2030 hinges upon women‟s empowerment (as almost 17 goals and their indicators are directly or indirectly linked to it), and the role of ICT in enhancing women‟s empowerment has been established through this study. The study at the end emphasizes the penetration of ICT to empower women and foster the process of achieving the SDGs Agenda 2030. KEY WORDS: Women Empowerment Information Sustainable Development Goals