Women are on the web. They are working on the net. Today they are a project seeking to maximise use of international data exchange as also to encourage development of informatics and telematics structures to broaden the reach of the net and the access of women everywhere. For once, women are not left behind in the access, use and sharing of new information and communication technologies, in particular the Internet. While not all women in the world have complete and practicable access to Internet, wherever Internet has reached, women have also been active in making use of its open access and communication capacity.
This is the basic message of the project and the guide of the same name, Women Working on the Net, by Wendy Harcourt and published jointly by UNESCO and the Society for International Development both of which also recently held a workshop on Which Globalization: opening spaces for civic engagement (Santiago de Compostela, Spain 20 May 1997). This workshop also laid the way for another related and highly relevant report, A Multicultural Guide to the Net.
Women Working on the Net highlights and describes eleven women's networks that operate through the Net and cooperate with several other associations and networks. Among these are SID's own website, and WomMed (in French, FemMed) created as a direct response to the Toronto seminar on Women and the Media: access to expression and decision-making, and run by Sally Burch and Gloria Bonder at the Latin American Information Agency in Ecuador. The WomMed/FemMed Network brings together women and men from around the world who are working together to redress gender imbalance in expression and decision-making in the media, reaffirming the importance of fluid and pluralistic communication for women's full participation in society and promoting all forms of democratic communication.
Click here to surf The Women and the Media page, WomMed.
Some 30 gender-related electronic forums are listed with a brief description of the kind of issues they deal with. There are also 22 major websites listed. In comparison with the several hundred thousand sites on the Net, these small numbers may not at first site seem significant, and yet they do indicate that women are motivated and ready to take on new technology. It is heartening to note that several of these sites are physically in or virtually managed from a number of developing countries, such as Ecuador, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, India, Republic of Korea.
The work of getting women on the web finds its inspiration in Article 237 of Section J Women and the Media of the Beijing Platform for Action. " Women should be empowered by enhancing their skills, knowledge and access to information technology. This will strengthen their ability to combat negative portrayals of women internationally and to challenge instances of abuse of the power of an increasingly important industry."
It is noteworthy that the participants of the Beijing conference also recognized that most women especially in developing countries, are not able to access effectively the expanding electronic information highways and therefore cannot establish networks that will provide them with alternative sources of information. "Women therefore need to be involved in decision-making regarding the development of the new technologies in order to participate fully in their growth and impact," the Beijing Report urged. The 4th UN World Conference on Women has thus opened up a space for promoting the democratic right of women to communicate. The process has been started.
Further beyond Beijing, was the UNESCO Toronto Platform of Action, which is important because it reflects the proposals of citizens groups, of women's movements and of journalists' associations. This seminar expressed the same preoccupations, that is to enhance women's work in the media and increase their access to media and self-expression in the media, including new information technologies.
One of the gravest risks facing women in the future is that of potential information overload on the one hand, where there is an over abundance of information with the consequent difficulty of distinguishing truth from fiction or outright deception; and information shortfall, on the other. While the means to handle information -satellite, electronic media, digital technology, the Internet -- are increasingly available and potentially democratic, there is risk of a new information elitism which can further disenfranchise the majority of the world's population and particularly women.
An inescapable issue therefore is how to expand the opportunities on the Net and share them with women from those areas of the world that are less developed, that do not yet have the telecommunication and informatics infrastructure to allow facile access to and use of Internet. In some cases, the very concept of networking has forced both modern and traditionally based networks to operate together and seek ways to close the distances and find common interfaces. A related issue is to ensure the training of all women so that they can respond to challenges in forms that are 'up to speed' with the information age. In this regard, Internet itself provides a means of helping to keep women abreast of events and relevant development, and respond in timely and time-relevant ways, and with the appropriate technology.
Women on the web therefore can tackle directly many of the issues they face today but which may have new responses with these new information and communication technologies: how launch innovations in the education system to encourage women to adapt with confidence and exploit high tech computer systems to the maximum? how use computers for income generating activities? how develop new skills in management style, team work, service orientation and communication? Fundamentally we need to address the issue of how to take advantage of the new information age to change the gendered division of labour.
Cyberspace can empower women. Cyberspace also impels radically new patterns of human communication. Women are well on the way to a positive use of cyberspace.