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 have been largely male dominated. However, the question that needs to be asked is if such access to empowerment via 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 dis empowerment that emerge from the narratives and end by offering suggestions for sustainable community engagement efforts that can lead to mutual empowerment, in line with national policies of social re engineering for the future up-liftment of underprivileged communities.