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In the early wave of optimism surrounding "ICTs and development" beginning 2000, much attention was paid to the potential of ICTs for empowering women. It was suggested that new technologies could help marginalized women in developing countries in areas ranging from agriculture to education, empowering women both economically and socially. However, subsequent research illustrated that such a straight outcome was not always the case. ICT interventions could equally result in a negligible or even negative impact on existing gender relations. This research argues a third point: In many cases women decide the extent to which they will adopt a particular technology on the basis of how they think it will affect the gender equilibrium. Based on our respective doctoral fieldwork on the use of mobile phones by female street traders in urban Uganda and an IT center and community radio in rural India, we ask: How strategically do women in developing countries negotiate agency through ICTs? Through these two case studies, we apply two concepts of agency, namely, "adaptive preference" and "patriarchal bargain" to understand how women decide to adopt ICTs. Empowerment through ICTs is not unproblematic, nor is it impossible; it is, however, illustrative of contextual, situated agency.

Effective engagement of local communities in externally driven development projects is problematic globally, including in the crucial development of locally appropriate plans for climate change adaptation, especially by rural communities. We present an exploratory case study of the purposeful use of an emerging values-based approach to first assist local communities to articulate and confirm their own, in-situ, shared values-in-action, as a pre-process to standard participatory vulnerability risk assessments (VRA). We separately engaged four Village Development Committees (VDCs) from the North East District in Botswana, where a widespread program of local VRAs is taking place. Results clearly demonstrate very significant and meaningful engagement by, ownership of, and relevance to, participants in the VRA process, evident through the bespoke and tailored considerations of local vulnerabilities and responses, and post-event focus group interviews. Specific details of links between the pre-process and the VRA process were mentioned by participants throughout. We conclude that the values-based process, known as the WeValue crystallization process, has very great potential for a stepwise shift in effectiveness of VRAs and local adaptation planning, and that a new agenda is needed to develop and test that WeValue's quasi-anthropological elements can be scaled up for widespread use internationally.

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Mobile phones have been posited as enhancing women's entrepreneurship and gender equality in developing countries, yet empowerment outcomes are unclear. This article considers how women in the gender‐segregated informal economy construct their entrepreneurial identity in relation to mobile phones and the discursive repertoires that marginalize and empower. Using data from interviews with six urban female street traders in Kampala, Uganda, it explores how these repertoires illustrate their sense of self, positioning and belonging to the business community. Normative representations and positioning of female traders can sideline entrepreneurial identity and over‐validate gender identity. But, participants also negotiate entrepreneurial identity construction in response to these marginalizing influences. Although the data demonstrate that participants are equivocal about their entrepreneurial identity or fit in business, some representations are more validating and offer a sense of belonging. The article concludes by highlighting the nuanced opportunities for social change their discursive repertoires may present.