Digital Doyennes

When people ask me what I do, what I am passionate about, I get all muddled for words. Where to start? Where to end? A forced examination for my own clarity revealed more than anything, I believe in access to information. This includes access for women, urban women, rural women, women of color, women living on reservations, mountain tops, valleys and even boats. 

Internet is a crucial game changer for business owners and entrepreneurs. A point Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer at the White House made during a speech yesterday in Atlanta.  Fittingly, his remarks were held at The Commerce Club, as one of Mr. Chopra’s job functions includes helping small businesses consider new methods for using technology. This approach helps companies do the tasks they’ve always done—but better. Chopra addressed how technology can create better healthcare, supply chain practices and smarter manufacturing-but nothing about how technology and access to it, can transform the lives of millions of American women. For someone whose job is advising the President, it is almost an understandable oversight-except that women comprise just over one half of the U.S. population. A 2010 Blogher/iVillage Media Matters study reported 87.1 million of the total U.S adult online population is women. 

Access for women means increased entrepreneurship as women can run home businesses. Women with web access have the ability to engage in e-commerce. The internet helps women make better health decisions, compare prices and save money. They can use budgeting and planning tools, help their children research colleges and find scholarship money in any region of the globe. Women make the majority of household financial decisions, run homes and are overwhelmingly the primary caretaker of others. The potential the internet holds for revolutionizing rural women’s lives is infinite.

Digital Sisterhood Month founder Ananda Leeke, was the first to bring the power of the web for women to my attention when I interviewed her last year. According to Leeke, the internet is a powerful source for women looking to connect, collaborate, communicate, build community and create commerce. A second was Loris Taylor, President of Native Public Media. For native women, distance and geography limit women’s choices in their occupation, where they can obtain proper medical care when required and even how they can communicate, as broadband penetration is less than 10% on native and tribal lands. 

Changing women’s lives changes the direction of entire communities. Mr. Chopra and the White House must devise a plan for increasing rural web access. Internet, in the hands of women, creates a low cost, yet, effective stimulus, increases the capacity for rural entrepreneurship, ultimately growing our economy from the ground up.