ABSTRACT
Information technology has the potential to engage women in development, which in turn improves donors and policymakers understanding of gender and increases access to local knowledge for better decision-making on all levels. This chapter examines the use of participatory research methods that seek to explain rural women's time use in Uganda and examine the impact of their spatial and temporal patterns. It demonstrates some of the difficulties in implementing Geospatial Spatial Information Technology (GSIT), top-down decision-making in the fields of development studies and feminist geography. The chapter examines land access, use and control among men and women using qualitative data techniques that include mental mapping with Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS), problem-ranking exercises and Venn diagrams, conducted during two focus group discussions. Finally, instead of reducing the role of the poor to subjects of study or mere end-users of IT, the poor must be active participants in its development of the knowledge gained from the results of the investigation.
