Workshop co-ordinator: Anju Vyas,
Center for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi, India

As a multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural field, women's studies and women's information is needed by a diverse community of users ranging from policy makers and students to women at all levels of society. The aim of the workshop was to examine various methods of delivering services to a broad range of users and explore innovations in customer needs and methods of training. The ultimate goal was to plan and formulate strategies for enhancing the capacities of the women's information provider.

Presenters: (papers translated into English were available for all but two of the presentations, which were delivered in Spanish with the aid of a translator) Six Presenters delivered a paper. 28 participants attended this workshop.

1.Yoko Amakawa, The Dawn Centre (Japan) This presentation covered "Developing Counselling Skills in Providing Women's Information and Making it More Visible and Accessible to Women". It describes the Dawn Center Library and focuses on specific activites, including case study type of examples of the reference interview and the process their staff goes through to provide appropriate services. She focused on two points: confirming the role of women's information librarians who help connect women and information for empowerment, and developing a program for acquiring the necessary skills. The Dawn Center Library offers four courses to teach women the skills needed to access information. Workshop content was presented and included: a Dawn Net Reference Course for Users; Utilizing Personal Computers; Utilizing Information; and a Special Seminar on Information Activities for Staff.

 

2. Salma Ginwalla, Zambia Association for Research and Development (ZARD) A description of ZARD and their research and gender training program was presented (no formal paper). This small, specialized center, established in 1984, is focused on enhancing women's lives through research and gender training. An overview of the status of women in Zambia was presented and using the specific example of the horrific status of widows in Zambia, the presenter showed how ZARD's work on the issue helped to change the laws to improve the status and condition of women. Upon the death of the husband, a widow is completely stripped of ALL property and possessions by the husband's family leaving both her and her children destitute. Using an aggressive research-action approach, ZARD researched the legal status, documented the problem, and disseminated their results widely using a variety of formats for a wide range of users: reports, briefs, workshops, seminars, brochures, song, drama, radio, and even performance to get the word out. They produced a video on the "Plight of Widows and Children in Zambia" and had it dubbed in SEVEN local languages and took it EVERYWHERE. The law was revised and changed in 1993, although there are still problems with enforcing the laws. Their resource center, established in 1988, is a progressive, action-oriented center used to strengthen the women's movement. They have an user-education program to train users at all levels how to use their center. Their instruction was described as "point of high motivation"-- a one-on-one, informal, as-needed approach. In order to learn to how to address the real needs of their grassroots clients, they went into the communities to talk to and work with the women and learn from their experience. Although their grassroots women may not want to use the Internet, or feel comfortable with it, ZARD sees their role as one of finding the information, then re-packaging it an disseminating it to their users as needed.

 

3. Gloria Henriquez and Maria Luisa Trejo Perez, Centro de Servicios Legales para la Mujer (CENSEL), Domninica Republic Both of these presentations were in Spanish and the presenters expressed dismay at what they perceived as a lack of adequate translation facilities. Papers in Spanish were present, although they were not made available in duplicate to the workshop participants. The first part of the presentation was a description of the status of women in the Dominican Republic, the imbalance of power, problems with discrimination and the legal status of women. An historical overview of the development of political organizations for women was presented and how they came to be to integrate women into the development process. Violence in the Family was identified as a major problem in D.R., as well as incest and using this as an example, she described how CENSEL fought to change the laws to protect women and children and improve the status of women. Laws were eventually passed making incest and violence against women a crime. Their organization provides education and legal support to all of the women in the D.R. Their approach to user training was unclear. In the second part of the presentation, Perez provided a detailed account of the development of resource centers for women in the D.R. and how their information services for women operate. There were more than 30 centers operating in 1990 and they are working hard to improve co-operation among the many centers. They want a network of national centers that can fight together to end all discrimination against women. They are trying to create a unified database of all the centers and want to have workshops on documentation and classification for member organizations.

 

4. Mischa Peters, Multimedia and Diotima Project, The Netherlands (hard-copy of the paper was available to workshop participants). This presentation discussed the development of a training program for a broad range of users called DIOTIMA. It is a 3-year project aimed at developing a distance-education, part-time course on Gender and Politics. 11 Universities from 7 European countries are working together to develop the packages. They aim to develop gender-friendly, open and distance learning materials. The course packages were developed for a number of target groups: employees in public and private organizations, trade unions and politicians. She discussed problems they encountered in the process, including a gender gap in access to computers, and not being completely dependent on the computer as a tool for the dissemination of distance learning materials. They also made use of workbooks, video-lectures and audio-tapes. Anxiety about the use of the new technologies was addressed in the context of using the Net to develop distance learning programs and materials.

 

5. Pham Thi Hue, Centre for Family and Women's Studies, VietNam (hard-copy of the paper was available to workshop participants). This paper focused on "Activities of Information, Documentation and Library Department of the Center for Family and Women Studies to Meet User Needs". A description of the center was presented- being officially founded in 1987 as the first institution in VietNam which specializes in studying the theoretical and practical issues related to family women and gender. By analysing their user base via a questionnaire and direct discussion with users, they were able to clearly identify their main user groups and clearly target their information needs. A useful table was presented which showed 4 main groups of users, the information they need, and then a list of where they could find that information. It was a good model for others to use in helping them to figure out how to best serve their user base. The chart provides the information provider, as well as the user, with a guide to the appropriate resources. They have automated their collection using CDS/ISIS, and although difficult for users, they have prepared a guide for using the program to hand out to users.

Discussion: There was very little time left over for discussion as the presentations took up most of the allotted time. However, the following topics were brought up:

--The literacy rate in various countries and the differences between men and women and women in rural vs urban areas

-- Methods of reaching remote communities (radio)

-- The use of women's resource centers by the mainstream media and how to deal with them as a "user group"

-- The need to develop distance learning materials about each region to put on the Net so we can all learn more about one another. This may be a project of interest to funders.

--The need to not get carried away by the Internet just because it is fashionable now; many women still do not have access to the Internet and the new information technologies and they still need information. Cannot overlook the need to continue to use traditional methods of reaching people.

-- There should be more focus on LOCAL resources for LOCAL users.

Resolutions/Recommendations/Final thoughts...

A few things were identified by the group as priority areas:

1. Distance education courses on gender at a regional level should be developed and made available both on the Net and via alternative and traditional methods of delivery.

2. Training programs should be developed and made available for putting women's information on the Internet.

3. 60 million people live in Central Asia and they are all out of the communication/information loops. They need to be drawn into our networks.