The mobile phone has allowed women particularly in traditional societies to leave their homes to be engaged in income earning activities or be in the public sphere. Bangladeshi women, for instance, who are not allowed to travel outside after dusk or without a male escort due to religious and cultural norms, could leave their homes and engage in an income-earning activities due to their mobile phone use (Bayes 2001, p. 269; Kyomuhendo 2009; Tacchi, Kitner & Crawford 2012). Female users of the VPP service, particularly wives whose husband were abroad for work, for instance, could leave their homes to use payphones when they needed to make a call (Bayes, Braun & Akhter 1999). Mobile phone use by many Islamic female fish mongers and processors has improved their restricted movements (Traore & Sane 2009) and the husbands of market women in Kampala, Uganda, have allowed their wives to leave their homes because of their use of the mobile phone (Svensson & Larsson 2015).
Nowadays, even physically challenged women and mothers with young children can work outside the home if they own a mobile phone, as the device enables communication at any time (Tacchi, Kitner & Crawford 2012). Female owners of small and medium enterprises in Mumbai, India, can be physically mobile, attending to other matters but still receiving essential business calls with their mobile phones (Chew, Ilavarasan & Levy 2010). Hence, women have become more self-confident and independent (LIRNEasia 2012), gaining transformative, active agency due to changes to their traditional family and social positions in patriarchal societies. 3.2.4.1 Migration, women and mobile phones
Since mobile phones can facilitate connectedness, bridge time and location, geographic distances and social spaces have been greatly reduced for communication purposes (Donner & Escobari 2009; Horst & Miller 2006; Ling 2004). This along with globalisation has greatly increased temporary migration of women for employment while remotely managing their mothering duties and financially supporting families back home with the help of mobile communication (Garcia 2011; Lim 2014; LIRNEasia 2012; Madianou 2014; Madianou & Miller 2011, 2012; Masika & Bailur 2015; Svensson & Larsson 2015; Tacchi, Kitner & Crawford 2012; Vancea & Olivera 2013; Wallis 2011). (see also Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila 1997; Vertovec 2004; Uy- Tioco 2007). Nonetheless, Hjorth (2008, pp. 21-2) states that mobile phones lead to both empowerment and exploitation of women because their use indirectly promotes
and increases social and reproductive labour. Studies on the migration of women and their mobile phone use are relevant to Sri Lanka and the research site where large numbers of less educated women work in domestic roles in the Middle East and elsewhere to support their families back home.
The mobile phone is also useful for wives whose husbands are employed outside their hometowns because it allows them to receive information immediately from their husbands, who use informal methods to send money home (Aminuzzaman 2002; Richardson, Ramirez & Haq 2000). These women may also communicate with their husbands in private about financial matters whereas previously they needed to seek help from outsiders to write letters as most were illiterate. Many husbands who work abroad or away from home have provided mobile phones to their wives (GSMA 2010).
Women in Jamaica whose husbands work abroad can now easily contact them, unlike in the past when they had to depend on letters, payphone boxes or the landline telephones of wealthier families. Mobile phones have also made remittance inflows reliable, facilitating micro-coordination within families. Frequent mobile communication between couples has eased the potential for suspicion and strengthened romantic relationships, while families back home learn about the hard realities of living abroad (Horst 2006, p. 149).
In addition to their husbands, rural farming women in Mozambique contact their relatives in South Africa, asking them to send food when unable to feed their families (Macueve et al. 2009). In the Philippines, efficient mobile remittance services are widely popular due to the large number of Filipinos working overseas (Lim & Goggin 2014, p. 664). Sri Lanka and the Philippines had the greatest number of international calls made (in mid-2006), as they have large numbers of people working abroad. In Sri Lanka, for instance, 71% of women have made or received international calls (Zainudeen, Iqbal & Samarajiva 2010).
The above findings have implications for the present study because, in the research setting, many Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim men have migrated overseas during and after the civil conflict period, leaving their wives to be the heads of households and manage the earnings the husbands remit home. Hence, regular
communication between wives and husbands has become vital in financial and other household decision-making.
3.2.4.2 Women, micro finance institutions and mobile phones
Women’s organisations that provide micro finance services and study how their female members have incorporated mobile phones to these institutions’ related activities have grabbed the attention of scholars. As estimated by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and Women’s World Banking (WWB), more than 80% of the clients of microfinance institutions worldwide are women (De Silva, Pulasinghe & Panditha 2012). Because of the mobile phone, self-employed women in India, female fish mongers in Senegal, female street vendors in Uganda and women in Mozambique, for instance, have been able to become members of women’s organisations; communicate with other members and officials; come out of their homes; start an income-earning activity; and participate in training, while managing their duties as mothers and wives helped by mobile communication (Macueve et al. 2009; Masika & Bailur 2015; Murphy & Priebe 2011; Tacchi, Kitner & Crawford 2012; Traore & Sane 2009).
Tacchi, Kitner and Crawford (2012) examined gendered tensions, concepts of ownership and usage of mobile phones, among the members of two women’s welfare organisations – the Deccan Development Society (DDS) and Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India. SEWA launched a loan program for women to purchase mobile phones to improve their technological use. The authors found that some women who obtained this loan had benefitted because they could easily contact their clients. The mobile phone allowed SEWA leaders to expand their networks and unite because of coordination between local members and head offices, as also found by Abraham (2009) in Zambia and Murphy and Priebe (2011) in rural Kenya. SEWA, with more than one million female members working in the informal agricultural sector, sends SMSs on prices of products. About 20,000 women have subscribed to this service to obtain better prices for their products and make decisions and plans with regards to harvesting and crops to be cultivated (United Nations Development Programme 2012).
As members of women’s organisations, women foster solidarity, recognition, respect and identity due to their transformed social, cultural, spatial and political avenues, economic contributions made to their families and access gained into savings
and loan schemes. For example, such women find themselves referred to by their own names, instead of simply as their husbands’ wives. Hence, mobile phones have apparently become agents of diverse cultural and social changes, transforming women’s lives (Tacchi, Kitner & Crawford 2012).
Similarly, Abraham (2009), examining the role of mobile phones in communication for advocacy and change in women’s groups in Lusaka, Zambia, found that women’s groups regularly communicated with their members and sent advocacy- related messages to mobilise them. Individual members could form networks with other individuals facing similar issues, enabling them to obtain assistance to develop their social capital- a prerequisite to exerting positive influences on policy and advocacy. Therefore, organised women’s group networks have formed ‘virtual communities’ (2009, p. 98).