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In the past twenty years, international, regional and national women's communications networks have worked together to build what has become a truly global women's movement. With a strong background of leadership and linkages often built around the early work of more traditional international membership organizations such as the World YWCA and Associated Country Women of the World, women have set up and expanded networks of communication and information that stretch into the farthest reaches of the world. In the past, the informal, but often very effective ways in which women around the world have maintained contact with each other have been seen as poor alternatives to the use of the much larger and so-called more "effective" official channels of communication, e.g. the mass media, government machineries, multinational corporations and international agencies. But this is proving to be an assumption that could do with more critical analysis. Women's alternative networks usually share an ideology and a set of values that have provided the "glue" to the network, and have sustained and allowed it to grow in a variety of shapes and forms that constantly change, break into new groups, dissolve and reform in an organic flow of movement completely unfamiliar in the world of bureaucracies, changing governments and commercial mainstream media. These latter institutions rely on political fortunes, budget priorities, the market place, and the whims of whoever is in power at the time. The world of women is a world of networks in which there are many leaders but no one person or group who does everything. Each network provides a channel for the collection, dissemination and generation of information, without any participant or group being dependent on one source only. In 1996, the International Women's Tribune Centre celebrated 20 years as an international network and communications support service for women worldwide. Since its beginnings in 1976 following the first UN conference on women and non-governmental forum in Mexico City, the IWTC network has grown from an initial constituency of approximately 6,000 to more than 26,000 in every world region. The publications of IWTC are in English, French and Spanish, and are produced in a highly visual, easy-to-read format that is well known around the world. As the years have gone by, the Tribune Centre has taken on added roles as a resource centre, source of women and development publications, provider of technical assistance and training, and outlet for electronic conferencing and networking. Above all, the Tribune Centre has grown with the global women's movement, with its basic philosophy and goals very much the same as they were when it started 20 years ago. These were to open access to information and knowledge to women in every corner of the world. Requests pour in from women everywhere, who want information about resources, contacts, and about the actions and experiences of other women also working around issues of social change and development. IWTC has supported the building of coalitions and networks amongst women and women's groups at local, national, regional and international level. More recently, it has supported women writers and publishers in the Global South, and made their books on women and development more readily available through Women, Ink. Women's networking has expanded dramatically, and there are countless networks now functioning that were not there twenty years ago. Much of this has been made more possible with the advent of new information technologies, particularly electronic conferencing, e-mail networking, and fax broadcasting. For instance, when the China Organizing Committee (COC) suddenly announced in March 1995 that the NGO Forum on Women would be moved from its downtown Beijing site to a site 40 miles away in Huairou, IWTC sent an urgent alert to WOMENET. This is a fax network of 28 women's media networks around the world that was set up after a women's media workshop in Barbados in 1991. Each women's media network faxed the message out to their own networks in each world region, and before long, tens of thousands of signatures were being sent in protest to the United Nations and the China Organizing Committee in Beijing. Unfortunately, it didn't change the minds of the Chinese hosts, but it did illustrate how rapidly and efficiently women could reach out and support each other in a time of crisis, a very empowering moment for women worldwide. From this beginning grew the Global Faxnet, a fax network of more than 500 multiplier groups in 88 countries, who took the one page bulletin and faxed it to all their networks. From Global Faxnet came a sister network known as GlobalNet, with initially more than 500 e-mail addresses and many of the Beijing-related electronic conferences and home pages on the World Wide Web. Both of these information networks are now known collectively as IWTC Women's GlobalNet, and at last count, there were 1,000 e-mail recipients for the English-language one-page bulletin, 500 fax recipients, and another 400 who receive the Spanish-language bulletin. This translates into tens of thousands once the bulletin has been resent from screens and fax machines that are regularly receiving information on the activities and initiatives of women world wide. There is no doubt that the four United Nations meetings on women, and in particular the four NGO Forums held parallel to the UN World Conferences on Women in Mexico City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985), and Beijing (1995), have encouraged many more women to become involved in this ever-expanding global women's movement for change. Women from every world region are collaborating at a much closer level than ever before, and with added resources and support, are able to do much more than previously in their own communities. However, there is still a lack of recognition of women at policy decision-making levels. For the past twenty years, thousands of women have been more deeply involved in the whole area of women and development than was ever thought possible, supported by women's media movement that has become more and more sophisticated in its ability to reach out to previously disenfranchised communities of women. Women from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific, the Caribbean and the Middle East have been actively participating in meetings at the UN focused on women and development issues and concerns. We have seen a revolution of sorts as women worldwide become increasingly involved in national, regional and international events and concerns. And yet there are still very few women in top decision-making positions. What has to happen before more women are included at the top? For a start, women have to be a natural and normal part of all discussions and deliberations around social, economic, cultural and political issues, and not just those that are presumed to be women's issues. The perspectives, intuitions, experience and expertise of women are necessary when governments discuss plans and policies for all development issues, whether those issues relate to food, peace, housing, transport, human rights, environment, science and technology or media. What do women need to become more fully a part of all these issues? Access to information and knowledge. Women are working on achieving greater gender equality at all levels of decision-making everywhere in the world. We all need to become much more involved in global issues and concerns, and in setting up support mechanisms for those women who are already in top positions so that they don't feel isolated and vulnerable. What do we need to become more involved? Access to information and knowledge. The Platform for Action that came out of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing is an important tool for the empowerment of women, and many women have become active in monitoring the actions of governments and the UN itself in its implementation. The advent of new information technologies such as electronic networking via computers, fax broadcasting, and other forms of telecommunications, has introduced a new dimension into all of this, with more women now able to follow what is happening at the United Nations and other international and regional organizations and agencies. It is important that all these new tools however, should be seen as an expansion of what has already been put in place by women worldwide, not a substitution. Many networks have been solidly established over the years by the development and publication of print materials that are sent out to women worldwide by the mail. To desert these time-honoured methods in favour of the new electronic methods would be to lose an important channel to the global women's movement. What do we need to become more involved in implementing the Platform for Action? Even more access to information and knowledge. Future information and communication strategies need to be multi-faceted and all-inclusive. Struggling channels need to be strengthened. Successful channels need to be evaluated and where possible expanded to reach others. The world of print materials is in many ways falling behind in this new age of modern technologies and tools. We can get breaking news around the world in seconds...but in-depth, substantive materials that support the advocacy and education efforts of women are becoming more and more difficult to find. Why? Because they take far more research and effort on the part of women's groups and seem often to be less visible. Future strategies need to include these print materials sent out by mail, supplemented but not supplanted by information that is disseminated with the use of new information technologies. Information e-mailed and/or faxed to groups worldwide should be focused towards "multiplier" groups who can take the information, translate the appropriate pieces for their region or country, use it on the radio, in their own newsletters and journals, and/or fax and e-mail it to their own networks. Using time-honoured "grape-vines of women", we can use alternative networking to our advantage, and strengthen and sustain the most viable structures that we women have built. The IWTC GlobalNet has proven very effective as a channel for breaking information on events, activities, campaigns and action alerts to the global women's movement. But it is only one part of a communication strategy that should utilize every possible means of reaching out to women wherever they are. An effective communication strategy should include the development of in-depth print materials sent by mail, the setting up of home-pages on the World Wide Web, fax broadcasting, e-mailing, electronic conferences, events such as workshops and small group meetings, participation in caucuses, seminars and forums, and support for and the dissemination and marketing of publications by and for women and more. The battle for the minds and hearts of people everywhere is an on-going one. More money than any of us could ever imagine is dedicated to taking control of mass media networks, whether via radio, television, newspaper, magazine, electronic conferences, on-line e-mail, satellite or telephone and fax machines. To be able tofind our way through this maze of technology and power, to reach out to the women and groups that are fighting for the empowerment of women and for gender justice and equality at all levels, we need to be determined and imaginative in our strategies and outreach. A clear path has been forged by the work of activist women's groups and media networks. Now we must build on this framework, and work towards a day when every woman in every country of the world has access to the information and knowledge she needs, and is empowered to participate at every level of governance in her country and in her world. Back to Keynote Speakers
In the past twenty years, international, regional and national women's communications networks have worked together to build what has become a truly global women's movement. With a strong background of leadership and linkages often built around the early work of more traditional international membership organizations such as the World YWCA and Associated Country Women of the World, women have set up and expanded networks of communication and information that stretch into the farthest reaches of the world.
In the past, the informal, but often very effective ways in which women around the world have maintained contact with each other have been seen as poor alternatives to the use of the much larger and so-called more "effective" official channels of communication, e.g. the mass media, government machineries, multinational corporations and international agencies. But this is proving to be an assumption that could do with more critical analysis.
Women's alternative networks usually share an ideology and a set of values that have provided the "glue" to the network, and have sustained and allowed it to grow in a variety of shapes and forms that constantly change, break into new groups, dissolve and reform in an organic flow of movement completely unfamiliar in the world of bureaucracies, changing governments and commercial mainstream media. These latter institutions rely on political fortunes, budget priorities, the market place, and the whims of whoever is in power at the time.
The world of women is a world of networks in which there are many leaders but no one person or group who does everything. Each network provides a channel for the collection, dissemination and generation of information, without any participant or group being dependent on one source only.
In 1996, the International Women's Tribune Centre celebrated 20 years as an international network and communications support service for women worldwide.
Since its beginnings in 1976 following the first UN conference on women and non-governmental forum in Mexico City, the IWTC network has grown from an initial constituency of approximately 6,000 to more than 26,000 in every world region. The publications of IWTC are in English, French and Spanish, and are produced in a highly visual, easy-to-read format that is well known around the world. As the years have gone by, the Tribune Centre has taken on added roles as a resource centre, source of women and development publications, provider of technical assistance and training, and outlet for electronic conferencing and networking.
Above all, the Tribune Centre has grown with the global women's movement, with its basic philosophy and goals very much the same as they were when it started 20 years ago. These were to open access to information and knowledge to women in every corner of the world. Requests pour in from women everywhere, who want information about resources, contacts, and about the actions and experiences of other women also working around issues of social change and development.
IWTC has supported the building of coalitions and networks amongst women and women's groups at local, national, regional and international level. More recently, it has supported women writers and publishers in the Global South, and made their books on women and development more readily available through Women, Ink. Women's networking has expanded dramatically, and there are countless networks now functioning that were not there twenty years ago.
Much of this has been made more possible with the advent of new information technologies, particularly electronic conferencing, e-mail networking, and fax broadcasting. For instance, when the China Organizing Committee (COC) suddenly announced in March 1995 that the NGO Forum on Women would be moved from its downtown Beijing site to a site 40 miles away in Huairou, IWTC sent an urgent alert to WOMENET. This is a fax network of 28 women's media networks around the world that was set up after a women's media workshop in Barbados in 1991. Each women's media network faxed the message out to their own networks in each world region, and before long, tens of thousands of signatures were being sent in protest to the United Nations and the China Organizing Committee in Beijing. Unfortunately, it didn't change the minds of the Chinese hosts, but it did illustrate how rapidly and efficiently women could reach out and support each other in a time of crisis, a very empowering moment for women worldwide.
From this beginning grew the Global Faxnet, a fax network of more than 500 multiplier groups in 88 countries, who took the one page bulletin and faxed it to all their networks. From Global Faxnet came a sister network known as GlobalNet, with initially more than 500 e-mail addresses and many of the Beijing-related electronic conferences and home pages on the World Wide Web. Both of these information networks are now known collectively as IWTC Women's GlobalNet, and at last count, there were 1,000 e-mail recipients for the English-language one-page bulletin, 500 fax recipients, and another 400 who receive the Spanish-language bulletin. This translates into tens of thousands once the bulletin has been resent from screens and fax machines that are regularly receiving information on the activities and initiatives of women world wide.
There is no doubt that the four United Nations meetings on women, and in particular the four NGO Forums held parallel to the UN World Conferences on Women in Mexico City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985), and Beijing (1995), have encouraged many more women to become involved in this ever-expanding global women's movement for change. Women from every world region are collaborating at a much closer level than ever before, and with added resources and support, are able to do much more than previously in their own communities.
However, there is still a lack of recognition of women at policy decision-making levels. For the past twenty years, thousands of women have been more deeply involved in the whole area of women and development than was ever thought possible, supported by women's media movement that has become more and more sophisticated in its ability to reach out to previously disenfranchised communities of women. Women from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific, the Caribbean and the Middle East have been actively participating in meetings at the UN focused on women and development issues and concerns. We have seen a revolution of sorts as women worldwide become increasingly involved in national, regional and international events and concerns. And yet there are still very few women in top decision-making positions.
What has to happen before more women are included at the top? For a start, women have to be a natural and normal part of all discussions and deliberations around social, economic, cultural and political issues, and not just those that are presumed to be women's issues. The perspectives, intuitions, experience and expertise of women are necessary when governments discuss plans and policies for all development issues, whether those issues relate to food, peace, housing, transport, human rights, environment, science and technology or media. What do women need to become more fully a part of all these issues? Access to information and knowledge.
Women are working on achieving greater gender equality at all levels of decision-making everywhere in the world. We all need to become much more involved in global issues and concerns, and in setting up support mechanisms for those women who are already in top positions so that they don't feel isolated and vulnerable. What do we need to become more involved? Access to information and knowledge.
The Platform for Action that came out of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing is an important tool for the empowerment of women, and many women have become active in monitoring the actions of governments and the UN itself in its implementation. The advent of new information technologies such as electronic networking via computers, fax broadcasting, and other forms of telecommunications, has introduced a new dimension into all of this, with more women now able to follow what is happening at the United Nations and other international and regional organizations and agencies. It is important that all these new tools however, should be seen as an expansion of what has already been put in place by women worldwide, not a substitution. Many networks have been solidly established over the years by the development and publication of print materials that are sent out to women worldwide by the mail. To desert these time-honoured methods in favour of the new electronic methods would be to lose an important channel to the global women's movement. What do we need to become more involved in implementing the Platform for Action? Even more access to information and knowledge.
Future information and communication strategies need to be multi-faceted and all-inclusive. Struggling channels need to be strengthened. Successful channels need to be evaluated and where possible expanded to reach others. The world of print materials is in many ways falling behind in this new age of modern technologies and tools. We can get breaking news around the world in seconds...but in-depth, substantive materials that support the advocacy and education efforts of women are becoming more and more difficult to find. Why? Because they take far more research and effort on the part of women's groups and seem often to be less visible.
Future strategies need to include these print materials sent out by mail, supplemented but not supplanted by information that is disseminated with the use of new information technologies. Information e-mailed and/or faxed to groups worldwide should be focused towards "multiplier" groups who can take the information, translate the appropriate pieces for their region or country, use it on the radio, in their own newsletters and journals, and/or fax and e-mail it to their own networks. Using time-honoured "grape-vines of women", we can use alternative networking to our advantage, and strengthen and sustain the most viable structures that we women have built.
The IWTC GlobalNet has proven very effective as a channel for breaking information on events, activities, campaigns and action alerts to the global women's movement. But it is only one part of a communication strategy that should utilize every possible means of reaching out to women wherever they are. An effective communication strategy should include the development of in-depth print materials sent by mail, the setting up of home-pages on the World Wide Web, fax broadcasting, e-mailing, electronic conferences, events such as workshops and small group meetings, participation in caucuses, seminars and forums, and support for and the dissemination and marketing of publications by and for women and more.
The battle for the minds and hearts of people everywhere is an on-going one. More money than any of us could ever imagine is dedicated to taking control of mass media networks, whether via radio, television, newspaper, magazine, electronic conferences, on-line e-mail, satellite or telephone and fax machines. To be able tofind our way through this maze of technology and power, to reach out to the women and groups that are fighting for the empowerment of women and for gender justice and equality at all levels, we need to be determined and imaginative in our strategies and outreach. A clear path has been forged by the work of activist women's groups and media networks. Now we must build on this framework, and work towards a day when every woman in every country of the world has access to the information and knowledge she needs, and is empowered to participate at every level of governance in her country and in her world.
