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Minutes of Track 2.III
Disseminating Information via Internet
Tuesday, August 25, 1998
- 1. Buhle Mbambo, University of Botswana (Botswana), "Disseminating African
Women's Information via Internet" - Information technology environment - Only in 1997
all African countries got some Internet access. Still, most of the users are concentrated
in the urban areas, where as in the rural areas, where most of the population are women,
even the phones are not accessible (only 1 person in 70 has a phone connection). Further
disadvantage for the women is the high cost of the computers and for instance, in
Botswana, they cost three times the average monthly salary. - Dissemination of information
- which media are we going to use depends on the type of information we want to
disseminate. The choice should be made upon the following factors: target audience,
expected feedback, type of information, urgency and the available means. In the case of
Africa, one can tell that Internet definitely is not the best way to disseminate the
information. There are two challenges for the women; 1. digitalisation of the already
present databases and 2. the accessibility of the electronic databases from the WWW as
most of the Women NGO are using donated software from UNESCO (CDS ISIS) which is not
readable on the WWW. However, there are some success stories, not of Internet, but
listservs where by using email, the information is widely disseminated (example, GAIN -
Gender in Africa Information Network) Strategies for improvement of the dissemination of
the information: - Training (both awareness raising and skills training) - Access to
computers (The computers and Internet should be demystified) - Technical issues (more
efforts should be put into both digitalisation of the African women databases in order to
make it accessible via the Web and improving the telephone lines - further explore the
possibilities for wireless connections) And as a final conclusion, although one can say
that the African women have made progress on Internet, they should not by any case, stop
at this point, of being mostly passive users of the information.
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- 2. Marie-Helene Mottin-Sylla, ENDA-SYNFEV and APC-Africa-Women (Senegal),
"Information for development for francophone African women - and beyond"
(email: mhms@enda.sn, http://www.enda.sn/synfev/synfev.htm) "Internet is a very
useful tool, but a recent one". There are a lot of obstacles and challenges like:
providing equipment and its maintenance, access (accessibility and cost), training,
support and language. Among the issues which are mostly discussed are: poverty, sexual
health and rights, peace and conflict, but also, communication and networking,
decision-making and economic autonomy. The contains information news, alerts, reports on
past and future events, jobs and training opportunities, bibliography and documentation,
tips on electronic communication, but also list of web-sites and other list. The last one
is still not very useful, as most of the users do not have access to Internet, but only
email. The information gathered origins either from the news agencies (both French- and in
English-language ones), but also from the members and other lists and 45% of it comes from
the other continents. The remaining 55% come from: francophone Africa - 29%, the rest of
Africa - 14% and from the members -12%). Still, only 33% of the information deals with
issues concerning francophone Africa. The concerns therefore present are: language - the
information comes mostly in English and it takes time and money to translate it, limited
information in French, information coming outside the region, no endogenous production of
content and more passive consumption of the information than active sharing for action. As
a conclusion, on talking about "Internet for grassroots women?" the cost of the
usage has to be taken into consideration and more efforts should be put both in providing
Internet for the women in the informal sector and building knowledge, partnerships and
expertise.
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- 3. Marzia Vaccari, ServerDonne (Italy), "Freedom and independence in the
implementation of gender information systems; SERVER DONNE a project using information,
telematic tools and library systems to foster the creation of a "public space"
" Marzia Vaccari read her speech in Italian after handing-out its English
translation. She started by making a metaphor about women being stopped at the point of
wanting to enter the Internet libraries unless accompanied (by mostly male
"technicians") just like Virginia Wolf was not allowed to enter the British
Library museum. Although Internet is based on the male culture and male points of view, a
lot of women have overcome those obstacles and expanded their ability for expression and
communication. A successful example of this is the ServerDonne (http://orlando.women.it)
set at the Bologna Women's Documentation Centre (CDD), which has received thousands
visits. Also, there has been an "Internet tea room" where women from the town
can access Internet free of charge and also get trainings on making WWW pages. One of the
main projects of CDD is also the "Hannah Arendt School of Politics" whose goals
are not only to improve the presence of women in the public spheres, but also exchange
information on "best practices" - successful projects and initiatives on local,
national and European level". Among the other things, ServerDonne offers internal
searching tool - trough key words, it finds the documents containing them, it is
information space where news about campaigns, petition and events are posted, it gives
updated information on women sites which continually appear on Internet and provides
thesaurus on gender issues (together with the LILITH network catalogue) Conclusion: Women
cannot be stopped anymore at the entrance of the libraries, and more over, those women who
voluntarily offer products of wide social value (like CDD) must get part of the resources
which is provided by the public sector for literacy, territorial cabling and telematic
equipment. The governments should meet their commitments, set in Beijing for encouraging
the women's information (including electronic) networks and information dissemination and
to support those women who are working in the different sectors of the media and
communication systems. In addition to this, there was a small discussion about how
important is to have women become PRODUCERS of the information (from women about women) -
not only passive consumers, that the level of information should not be very high and
complicated and Internet should be demystified. It is not very difficult to make a WWW
page after all.
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- 4. Anne Metz, Bibliotheque "Marguerite Durand" (France), reading a
paper from Joelle Palmieri, Les Penelopes (France) (penelope@planete.net,
http://www.mire.net/penelopes) Ann Metz started by explaining that reason why Joelle
Palmieri could not attend the Conference was that it was not possible to obtain funding
needed. In France it is very difficult to obtain finances for feminist activities (the
Bibliotheque "Marguerite Durand" does not even have modern computers, email and
Internet) as there is a lot of bureaucracy and difficult access to different funds at both
French and European level. France can be considered as the "Third World" of
Europe and Internet is just too expensive for the women groups. Another obstacle for a
wider usage of Internet is the lack of information in French language. Further, Joelle in
her paper (further commented by Ann Metz and Chandelle Millers from "Les
Penelopes") explains that "Les Penelopes" is a French women organisation
whose goal is to promote, publish and disseminate information from a women's perspective,
using any kind of media, as well as encouraging exchanges, updating and collecting
information for the benefit of the women. "Les Penelopes" is trying to achieve
this by creating virtual libraries, international discussion forums and newsgroups so that
women can share their experiences with each other. There was also a federate WWW site
project launched, supported by a network of national feminist and women organisations. The
network organises also free Internet trainings for women organisations and individuals.
The trainings are also trying to demystify Internet and to make this tool (not science!)
more accessible. As the multimedia technologies are linking with more traditional media
(such as digital TV), this is an opportunity to have women enter this mostly
male-dominated field of media. "Les Penelopes" has also created a CD-ROM on
women's history which is still in the demo-version. "Information is empowerment"
- the Internet has become a world place for women to share their experiences and actions,
enter new professional fields and raise consciousness outside the traditional media scene.
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- 5. Alejandra Scampini, REPEM (Uruguay), "Strengthening our voices,
communications training" REPEM is a regional organisation in Latin America which
specialises in adult education. It is a network of 167 NGOs whose experience is related to
women with low income, who have not received formal education, work in bad conditions or
are unemployed and have a very little access to technology. REPEM prioritizes the
trainings on technology and networking capacities. It is important to stress that most of
the magazines, bulletins and radical programmes are produced by non-professional women and
many of them have never received a previous training on using those technologies, so they
just learned by themselves, by using the technologies. In order to further spread the
information which is received at the REPEM office, REPEM decided to put a virtual weekly
magazine "La Red Va" (which can be received by email) and in doing this,
attention was paid to do it by email with a simple layout, have the information in a
simple and accessible to a lot of women language and also, the alphabet was simplified. It
was decided not to use attachments and it is unreadable in most of the cases and not to
work on setting WWW pages as it is too early for that. The magazine covers information
from Latin America and the Caribbean region and tries to keep a balance between positive
and negative information, have some information in Portuguese, have section on
communication training with some tips and so on. In the beginning, it was very difficult
to obtain information from the readers, but after a while, REPEM got overloaded with
contributions. [There was a question how can this be explained, on which the answer was
given that the readers realised it was a regular and important publication with
information that concerns them and where everybody can write to in an informal simple
style. Furthermore, a couple of women expressed how informal and nice is the style and the
approach of this magazine] REPEM wants to meet the following objectives: disseminate the
Beijing Action Platform and the items concerning the women from the region, promote
communication as a strategic tool, empower from a communications point of view, the
materials produced by the NGOs and increase women's knowledge and information about the
use and importance of electronic media.
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- 6. Resolutions for the Resolution Committee - Women should be the producers of
the information (from women about women)
- There are a lot of similar interests, topics and experiences between the different NGOs
- It is very important to disseminate the information about trainings and job
opportunities for women.
Is there going to be a mailing list with email addresses after the Conference?
There has been already one for 6 months and can be accessed through the Know How WWW site
(http://www.iiav.nl/knowhow/index.htm)
By the end, a lot of the participants shared their excitement about the speed and the
power of information dissemination via email and Internet and the possibilities that are
open for new contacts and exchanges of experiences.
Minutes taker: Ana (Hannah) Mishkovska Kajevska
This page last updated on september 4, 1998. Copyright © 1998 IIAV.
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