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Gender (gk97.gender) Conference
By Maureen James
Maureen reports on the APC online conference, "gk97.gender". This conference is available to APC subscribers.
Using a recent report on Gender and Information Technology, prepared by the APC Women's Programme, this list will be open from now until the end of September. So far, more than 100 participants from around the world have signed on, introduced themselves and begun to exchange ideas.
Thus far, participants have exchanged news and information about innovative, popular uses of information technology, including:
- a community women's networking access initiative in Tver (Russia), operating out of a university professor's home, where one e-mail account is shared among 30 women, and where women act as information bridges to those not online by making presentations of online findings; and
- Sirene, a project in Berlin, to get local women's organisations interested in using email and networks, offering women-only training.
A host of practical suggestions have also been aired. Most of these have been geared toward women's organisations, such as the need for a greater emphasis on grass roots access to new technologies (eg, women's microbanking, IT applications to deal with illiteracy, and the development of solar-based IT technologies for use by rural women). However, in the spirit of the GKD97 processes, many participants have addressed the need to lobby government and other decision-makers, as well as the need to hold the World Bank and others to task for the under-representation of women in high-level IT circles (such as the GKD97 event itself).
The questions and issues addressed at "gk97.gender" are as diverse as the interests of the people who have participated. While it could be said that they have begun to plumb the depths of gender and IT issues, there is a lot more to come. Much of the material developed in the gender conference is being prepared for presentation at the physical conference, and the discussion will continue until the end of September!
Maureen James <maureen@web.net> is a freelance Internet consultant and writer working closely with the Association for Progressive Communications and Web Networks. |
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