ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how women’s mobile phone usage is related to the negotiation of gender roles in everyday life and how and in what situations mobile phones can empower women. The living situation differs widely for women in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas, which influences women’s appropriation of mobile phones. The chapter focuses on 30 semi-structured interviews with Kenyan women and asks: how do Kenyan women in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas use mobile phones? When and how do mobile phones empower Kenyan women? The relationship between society and technologies is dialectic, that is, societies shape technologies as much as technologies shape societies. In order to analyse gendered technology, concepts such as empowerment, agency, and structure are useful. All women who have mobile phones feel that they have ‘made life easier’, as communication has become cheaper and much more convenient making it easy to deliver urgent messages.
