MOBILE PHONES, INTERNET, AND GENDER IN MYANMAR MOBILE PHONES, INTERNET, AND GENDER IN MYANMAR RESPONDENT 2 AGE 63 LOCATION YANGON (URBAN) OCCUPATION RETIRED HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL AND PART-TIME TEACHER AT A PRIVATE SCHOOL MOBILE OWNERSHIP STATUS OWNER I think it would be useful if there were courses for those over the age of 60 on the use of the internet, YouTube, etc Of course, it may have its functions but I don’t know how use them. Whenever I get a call, I just know the buttons to answer or to hang up. Mobile ownership in her household Except for Respondent 2’s mother, all other members of the household have mobile phones. Although she has two handsets, i.e. a keypad phone and a smartphone, she mainly uses the keypad phone. “I don’t have enough time to learn how to use a mobile phone. When I was in service at the government school, I couldn’t learn because of my work commitments at school. Now, I still have some level of responsibility to take on in the classroom at the private school that I work in.” ���Whenever I ask my daughter (to teach me how to use the phone), she says, “Mom, you will forget it again because you don’t use it often”. “But I forget everything when I stopped using it [the phone].” Why and how did she get her mobile phone? Respondent 2, is a 63-year-old working woman. She is a retired principal of a government high school, but is now a part-time teacher at a private school. She is actively involved in a B.Ed. alumni association and in social activities. She values the work and responsibilities she had when she was working as a public servant. However, her mother’s health and her daughter’s job are now more important to her. Respondent 2 owns her own mobile phone, but does not use the internet. Her household Respondent 2 is a widow and currently lives with her mother, sister, niece, and daughter. All members of the household have their own income and they share household expenses. She obeys her mother and consults her on financial matters. Her mother is the head of the household and is the key decision-maker for family affairs. Between them, she and her daughter earn MMK 800,000 a month. She also keeps some money aside for her own expenses. Challenges and difficulties Respondent 2 faced many work-related challenges when she was a high school principal. She has no significant challenges on the home front though, as her mother takes the lead in household activities and is involved in most family affairs. In terms of communication, she faced many difficulties not having a mobile phone when she worked at the high school. Whenever landlines broke down, she was compelled to ask a member of the school staff or dispatch a man to send messages or documents to other offices/schools. She also faced problems with landline phones, and a mobile phone became a necessity for keeping informed about her family’s safety, and for her own security as well. “I used to spend most of my week at school and returned home only once a week. I used to call the home phone when I was about to come back home. On one such day when I called home, no one answered the phone. So, I thought our phone was broken. But when I called again after 1 or 2 days and they still didn’t answer, I become suspicious. So I called one of my sisters, who told me that my mother was at the SSC hospital but that it was not emergency. After that, I had to go back home after school every day.” Even though she required a mobile phone, she allowed her daughter to get one for herself first. They had to send applications in order to get the SIM from the government. It was a difficult time for telecommunications. Later, when mobiles become cheaper, she bought a new one for herself. Respondent 2 had received verbal, unofficial notice from the Divisional Education Department that using mobile phones would be beneficial at work. She says that the Department must focus on arranging this. She bought her first SIM from the government and gave it to her daughter. She later bought a CDMA SIM from Nay Pyi Taw. “I didn’t need a mobile phone that much at the time. It was more important that she [my daughter] had a phone. And she wanted to use it. I could also check on her whereabouts when she carried a mobile phone.” “[Mobile phones are] popular among the youth even though they have nothing special to do with it…they just want to use it as a fashion accessory.” Mobile and internet usage She currently uses only one feature on her mobile: voice calling. Whenever she makes a call, she presses the buttons on the keypad to dial, and does not use the address book in her phone. She does not know how to save contact numbers and cannot read messages. “Sending messages and storing numbers confuses me. 78 I need to see the number. They [callers] said you have the numbers in your phone but I don’t know how to look it up on the phone. So, I ask them just to give the numbers and then I write them down.” Respondent 2 never uses the internet herself. However, she uses the information gathered from the internet by other people, such as her daughter or teachers from her school. “What I understand is that I can use the internet to look for what I want to know. For example, I want to write an essay about “the moon”. Then I need to find the information, and for this I have to ask for my daughter’s help. So, I found a lot of information about the moon. I just translate this information from English to Burmese and copy it. I don’t need all data that is found in this way.” What she thinks of owning a mobile phone “It’s more convenient when we have mobile phones, as we can inform each other about where we are and when we will be back.” “I’ll practice a lot after I’ve changed my handset. Especially, messaging. My friends ask me to send messages.” “I want to use Facebook and email for work…there may be other things as well. Now the internet and YouTube are very popular and I have never heard about them before. Whatever new things come in, I want to learn about them as well.” She suggests that there should be demonstration courses on TV channels to show how to use mobile phones and how to go on the internet, especially for older women like her. On the risks of mobile phone usage, she says that students have access to inappropriate content without their parents’ knowledge: “Most Grade 11 students surfed the web when I was in service at the Government school. Sometimes, they were even watching pornographic videos in the class. The Director General of the Education Department asked us to handle such situations by keeping all of the mobile phones of the students in order to investigate. So, once we found out, we informed their parents. To be honest, their parents didn’t let them bring mobile phones to school; instead, they just let them use them outside of school for emergency purposes. However, the children brought mobile phones to school without their parents’ knowledge and they shared the videos with their friends.” 79