mWomen

Hillary Clinton and Cherie Blair launch mobile phone scheme for women in developing nations.

This is wrong in so many ways that I scarcely know where to begin.

1. The proposition that Clinton H, and Blair C should be role models for independent, up-by their-bootstraps women entrepreneurs, is risible.

2. The idea that folk living on $2 a day need smart phones as opposed to - say - plumbing, is incredibly patronising at a let-them-eat-cake level of abstraction and delusion.

3. The notion that giving women in reactionary, misogynist societies mobiles will somehow magically empower them is dangerously disingenuous and Panglossian. A tool that will let men monitor where their women are all the time, and give the patriarchy the ability to summon their drudges instantly for any whim seems as likely to oppress as liberate.