Week 6: Marketing womens' products: fair trade, international transport and local control through information communication technology
New information communication technologies create new marketing opportunities for women in developing countries. These technologies create new transport needs, patterns and demand. The technologies also provide remote communities with the ability to monitor the price and location of their products. This seminar will explore how new logistic developments in the developed world can be harnessed to the needs of women in the developing world.
The key readings are:
The first reading provides a discussion of the fair trade concept and how it relates to gender in terms of the marketing and sale of third world products.
The second of these readings provides a case study of a situation in which ICT opportunities are present and have not been taken full advantage of by women involved in selling their goods. It makes suggestions on changes that could be made to better utilise the opportunities that ICT affords for improved gender benefits.
For further reading on the use of ict in the development of women's enterprises go to:
ICTs can be used to organise and schedule the transportation of the goods produced by female enterprises and gender targeted income-generating projects; it can be used to track these goods across the length of their journeys; it can be used to monitor the selling price and other distant transactions; it can play a part in increasing the volume of goods that are traded and transported.
For an understanding of Fair Trade practices go to:
For information on Fair Trade and Gender as a growing policy discourse go to:
For case studies of Fair Trade and gender go to:
The context of trade in Africa; the obstacles to an African market:
http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/files/calendar/4538/Lee_ppt.pdf
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