ABSTRACT
The digital domain can be a significant enabler of economic and socio-cultural empowerment for women. Participation of Malaysian Indian women in such domains can effectively transform and transgress traditional boundaries of business and commercial platforms that, in the Malaysian and, more specifically, Malaysian Indian context, have been largely male-dominated, leading to various forms of empowerment. However, the question that needs to be asked is if such access to the digital domain is privy to the more affluent middle class as opposed to the underprivileged and if so, what measures can be taken to address this digital divide. This paper explores the prospects and challenges of empowerment through the digital domain by presenting comparative communal narratives from a selection of Malaysian Indian women from the middle-class sector and the underprivileged Bottom 40% (or B40). It will highlight thematic threads of both empowerment and disempowerment that emerge from the narratives and end by offering suggestions for sustainable community engagement efforts that may be able to lead to mutual empowerment.
