Can Technology alone Empower Women? A Study of Impact of Mobile Phone Technology on Women in SEWA

With the extent of mobile phone penetration in India and the usage of mobile phone apps technology, its impact on women's empowerment needs a nuanced study. Can technology empower women? Can it alone empower women? These are some of the questions looked into by this article. Women called Rudiben in Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) using a mobile phone with the software named Rudi Sandesh Vyavhar (RSV) have been interviewed in Anand and Mehsana district of Gujarat. Drawing on Naila Kabeer's conceptualisation of women's empowerment, and using Kabeer's three component ‘resource’, ‘agency’ and ‘achievement’ for the measurement of empowerment, this article provides the bottom-up meaning of the term. The article investigates empowerment of women through the lifestory of the Rudiben and her association with SEWA as an alternative form of association different from the familial association. I argue that using the enabling environment which the ‘alternative association’ of SEWA provides, women transform the ‘associational resource of SEWA membership into an ‘associational asset’ through which they increase their income and decision-making power in their household, market and society. It is found that mobile phone usage by Rudiben, when mediated through SEWA, led to their empowerment which they define as the ‘ability to do anything they want to and become whoever they want to be’, particularly when they worked in a heterogeneous setting of SEWA than simply a homogeneous or the familial one.