by Annabelle Sreberny
The politics of the twenty-first century are already and increasingly transnational. Civil society and information technologies are key spaces and carriers while democracy and gender justice are amongst the key demands.
In 2003, a global popular movement is once again trying to intervene in a global process, the World Summit on the Information Society, to get its agenda of issues around the role of communications in development included. And yet again women are a highly active part of that process and struggling to make sure the gendered implications of the information society are taken on board.
My paper lies at the intersection of three key debates:
1) about communications and development
2) about the growing convergence between media and information technologies
3) about democratization and gender equality
1) Development
We live in a period of unprecedented technological development and economic integration, and when the gaps between the richest and poorest in the world have never been more evident. The latest UN Human Development Report of 2002 reminds us that "amid the wealth of new economic opportunities, 2.8 billion people still live on less than $2 a day. The richest 1% of the world's people receive as much income each year as the poorest 57%. And in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa the lives of the poorest people are getting worse" (UNDP, 2002:2)
The roughly £50 billion spent on the war with Iraq could have been spent on primary schooling, clean water, basic sanitation, adequate food, disease prevention. It costs about £2 billion to fee all the world's starving for a year, and £1 billion to provide clean water for 500,000 people.
It is important to remember that the recognition of the significance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for development and the growing demand for the extension of the benefits of the information society to all, rests on the understanding that that ICTs are an instrument for achieving economic and social goals but are not simply an end in themselves.
2) Convergence
Communication has been connected with development since the 1950s, mainly in the form of various media that could be utilised to bring knowledge, promote education, encourage participation, support democratization. Not the focus has shifted from the media (press, radio, television, to information and communication technologies. Essentially, we are living in a period of convergence between telecommunications, computerization and media, helped by digitalization and supported by both governments and industry around the world. Internet radio and video-streaming, broadband delivery of content to computers, internet connectivity through television, picture and video-messaging and WAP-based email on mobile telephony are the most obvious examples of converging technologies of diffusion that carry content and reach into households, and more is to come. Connectivity, content and communications technologies are blurring together so it makes less and less sense to debate media in one forum and information technologies at another. That is true for the entire WSIS debate, and especially true for women. If women are to gain equality of design, access, use and representation, we need more coherent and more broadly conceptualised strategies
The networking revolution has diffused very rapidly: While it took the telephone 75 years to reach 50 million people, it only took the Worldwide Web 4 years to do so. We are witnessing the rapid growth of the e-economy. So the danger of the "digital divide" is not just the lack of connectivity, but its implications for economic growth and sustainable development (Infodev, 2000). The mere existence of a gap in levels of ICT services between rich and poor across and within countries is not an automatic reason to argue that ICTs should be placed near the top of the development agenda. After all, poor countries have fewer factories, fewer cars, fewer doctors and nurses, and a lower calorie intake per capita than wealthy countries. But the growing gap is a cause for concern because the gap is larger in ICT provision than in other areas; there is evidence of an ICT-related poverty trap, since ICTS are increasingly important for taking part in global exchange, and countries without sufficient access will be excluded from the international trading system.
3) Gender and Democratization:
Global issues, including economic development, democratization and cultural production, have gender implications and globalization cannot be understood without acknowledging gender inequalities. For example, some brief statistics:
The necessity of writing women into the development process is better recognised,
and even the World Bank accepts the maxim that "by educating a woman you
educate the family and the nation." Women are the cornerstone of, and
redefining development, and the involvement of women in development planning
and process has immense ripple effects. Women straddle the boundary between
the private and the public. Women do not live alone but in families, tribes,
communities, are connected to many social networks and are participants in civil
society. Women's knowledge and achievements help everyone.
While structural adjustment policies have often hit women hardest of all, micro-credit
facilities made available to the poorest women suggest a move away from "trickle-down"
theories of wealth creation to a focus on empowerment and the alleviation of
poverty. All major global issues, and those that are the focus of UN conferences,
such as the environment, population, human rights, social development have gender
implications
The concept of "human development" has helped to rework a vision
of development equated solely with economic growth to a focus on people, and
has been further refined to include a Gender-related Development Index (GDI)
and also a Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) which includes indices of participation
in economic and political life (http://hdr.undp.org).
Of course the term "women" always signifies both too little and too
much, and there is a danger of an "essentialising" notion which claims
women's similarity across socio-economic, political and cultural boundaries.
It is vital to remember that "the shaping of gender identity and the ways
women experience subordination are connected and mediated by other core variables
such as race, class, age and generation, sexual orientation, history, culture,
and colonialism" (Riano, 1994:35)
Yet if women do not continue to highlight the gendered implications of global issues, few men will. Noreena Hertz has noted (2002) that at the World Economic Forum and World Trade Organization debates, concern about gender is hardly evident. And so women have crossed other boundaries and built up local, national and transnational movements to get gender on to the agenda at international fora.
Organizing transnationally
Increasingly, women's activism has been recognised as a powerful strand of global civil society (Castells, 1996; Falk, 1994). Its lines of solidarity and activism cut across national boundaries.
The emergence of global debates and global standards have benefited women in
a number of ways, helped by the UN's decade of focus on women between
the 1985 Nairobi and 1995 Beijing conferences. The expansion of international
law, based on UN or regional conventions, has established definitions of human
rights issues that now including the recognition of women's rights. International
legislation that prevents discrimination against women (CEDAW) has been signed
by 170 nations (the US has signed but not ratified!) (http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/index.html;
http://www.unifem.org/CEDAW)
Global campaigns against trafficking in women and children are gaining momentum
(http://www.hrw.org/about/projects/traffcamp/intro.html). So too are campaigns
that focus on various forms of violence against women. This includes not only
the chaos of war and public violence that affects women and children (as we
have seen in the horrendous images from Iraq), or (http://www.unifem.undp.org/trustfund)
but also includes private violence and domestic abuse.
For many decades, also, women have voice concerns about the media, including
the stereotyped and traditional images of both women and men; the huge amount
of sexist and pornographic imagery available, the invisiblity of women in news
stories.
Attention has been paid to compling data about the employment situation of
women in the media. There is an acute lack of empirical data, even from Western
industrial societies, concerning the situation of women in the media and there
is considerable evidence that an increasing number of women employed in the
media does not in itself translate into qualitative differences in programming
(Korea) or a radically altered news agenda of priorities (Australia). In Asia,
the growing numbers of women journalists "has not made a significant change
in the content, style or presentation of information. News decisions are still
made by men even if news is increasingly reported and edited by women...the
employment of women has not radically altered news agendas or priorities"
Balakrishnan, p.42)
Gender equity in employment can be a useful goal, "a 50% ideal women constituency
in the industry" (Balakrishnan, 1994:45) but one which needs to be operationalised
at every level and in every area of media employment.
The concern about stereotypes focuses on the narrowness of the range of representations of women in the media and the sexually objectifiying or violent gender imagery - women as objects of the male gaze, male sexuality, male violence. An important argument is that such concerns are not about censorship but about human rights, including the right to be represented appropriately. In regard to information genres, such as news, there is another set of concerns, which is essentially "where are the women?" Stories about women are rarely treated as newsworthy and news is urban-centric and women are still side-lined into stereotyped roles with far fewer women than men presenting or appearing in factual programming.
It is not that there are definable women's issues, but rather that media should try to reflect women's perspectives on all issues. women are everywhere and that women's perspectives in regard to political and economic, indeed all, issues must be heard.
Since it is often the "invisible barriers" (UNESCO, 1987) of attitudes, biases and presumptions that hinder women, assertiveness training and support groups within organizations can help women feel less isolated and alienated and empower them to try to act differently and produce difference. Women's professional organizations such as the IAWRT network also provide international solidarity and support.
Deciding to 'represent themselves', women have actively developed many forms of media:
Alternative Publications including newspapers, journals, magazines, newsletters as well as occasional monographs and leaflets, in the USA and Eruope, but also across the South. Isis International already in 1990 had a directory, Third World Women's Publications which listed over 300 publications. Some other and new publications include Sister, Namibia; Speak, South Africa (Lloyd, 1994), Tamania Mars, Morocco (Lewis, 1993) and Asmita, Nepal.
The Tamania Mars (18th March) Magazine Collective in Morocco:
Tamania Mars was begun in November 1983, published monthly till 1989, ceased for a year, then reappeared as a monthly journal. It was founded by women members of a left-wing political party plus a number of independent women, is organised democratically, is open to all women and publishes articles by men. It aims to provide information to women and establish a rallying point to fight against patriarchy, specifically the personal statutes of Morroccan law, and work for human rights and a more just and egalitarian society. Its aim is to build a self-reliant united women's democratic mass movement, addressing intellectual and working women, students and schoolgirls from the middle and lower classes. It was the catalyst for discussions and symposia on the origins of women's subordination in Morocco, carried out surveys and opinion polls, discussed previously taboo topics such as prostitution and repudiation and examined the broader contexts of the situation of women like the family, the economy, education, and legal structures. It also supported lectures, meetings, literary gatherings, cultural festivals and different kinds of action, which culminated in the establishment of Women's Action Union in 15 locations across Morocco. It was the inspiration for the establishment of other publications such as Nissa al Maghrib (Morocco); Nissa (Tunisia) and Fippo in Senegal. (Tamania Mars in Lewis, 1993)
Alternative Women's Press Services supportive of a feminist press have also developed around the world include DepthNews in Asia , the Women's Feature Service based in New Delhi, WINGS in the USA, and a women's news agency, FEMPRESS, in Chile
Alternative broadcasting, film and video: Media are used in local contexts to help define women's and community identity, to help develop skills and lose fears, to remember and to build for the future, as with video use by SEWA in India (Bali, 1993); or the use of video and radio among indigenous women in Bolivia and other parts of Latin America (Ruiz, 1994; Rodriguez, 1994) There is Radio Tierra in Chile, and FIRE (Feminist International Radio Endeavour), Costa Rica, which aims to "give voice to those who never had one". The FIRE collective conceives of radio as a process of meeting, dialogue, and participation with other women and puts great store on the transformational power of women's personal testimonies.
The Development through Radio Project, Harare, Zimbabwe
In 1988 The Federation of African Media Women-Zimbabwe (FAMWZ) started a project to provide rural dwellers with access to national radio by giving them the opportunity to participate actively in the preparation of development-oreinted programmes based on their own needs and priorities. The programmes comprise part of the regular schedule of the national education and development channel of Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.Radio listening clubs were organised in rural areas, with overwhelmingly female membership, aiming to deal with the imbalances in the distribution of and access to resources, from land to decision-making, which women faced, and to see if media could be used to promote greater access to other resources. Clubs listen weekly to a half-hour tape prepared by the broadcasters compiled from tapes submitted by all the clubs. After discussion on the topics raised and suggesting their own topics, clubs will record their own responses which are collected, listened to and then the appropriate government minister or official, businessperson, donor agency representative or other appropriate person will be invited to record responses and suggestions to the issues raised.
There are now 45 radio listening clubs in four of nine provinces, and a desire to expand to other areas, to include more men and adolescents in the clubs and communities also.
In the field of communications and information, women's alternative networks have already been busy for decades building up from grassroots organizations into national and regional structures to create a network of networks (Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1998) or "a world of networks in which there are many leaders but no one person or group who does everything" (Walker, 2002
Women have shown themselves to be excellent networkers, living locally but
both thinking and acting globally, extending solidarity across national and
other boundaries. There are networks with a specifically media focus like CAFRA,
Trinidad and Tobago; WAND, Barbados; SISTERLINK, Australia; IWSAW, Lebanon;
FEMNET, Kenya.
Organizations such as the International Women's Tribune Centre, New York, act
as central clearinghouses of information about women's activities globally.
IWTC also publishes The Tribune and manage Women, Ink, . a marketing and distribution
service funded by UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women who publish
Unifem News), which subsidises distribution to the South by sale of publications
in the North.
Isis International, operating out of Santiago, Chile and Manila, Philippines, was established as a NGO in 1974 as a women's information and communication service, supporting" the empowerment and full participation of women in development processes through the formation of networks and channels of communication and information". Isis has over 50,000 contacts in 150 countries, and its publications the directory of publications and Powerful Images (1986) which lists over 600 films, videos and slideshows by Third World Women.
There are regional networks like Asia network of women in communication, (ANWIC), New Delhi which publishes Impact and aims "to mobilise Asia women, through communication, to achieve a more equitable and just social order recognising the diversity present in the region" . And there are networks operating within a religio-cultural milieu like Women Living Under Muslim Law (WLUML) an international network of solidarity that publishes a quarterly newsheet as well as monographs on varied topics, including violence against women, reproductive rights and disenfranchisement. They have strong links with women's groups in the North (Women Against Fundamentalism in U.K) whose focus is often on the dilemmas of women in minority ethnic groups whose voices are often not heard by the dominant culture
Networking is facilitated by the use of the INTERNET and e-mail, with WEDNET (Women and Environment Network) forging links between its Canadian base and African researchers; Mujer a Mujer a Mexican-based women's collective concerned with free trade and structural adjustment, coordinating projects in Mexico, Canada, USA and Nicaragua. There are a variety of electronic bulletins (Women Envision by Isis; SEAWIN, South East Asian Women's Information Project in the Philippines) feminist list- servers and discussion groups, many under the aegis of the Association for Progressive Communication. Electronic mail can be cheaper than the telephone, faster than snail mail, and many women's groups are providing training for women activists and organizations on computers and e-mail
Women rapidly recognised and have utilised the power of new technologies, including the Internet, e-mail and fax, together with older media such as print, snailmail and the phone, to build networks of solidarity around events and issues. In these ways grassroots women's organisations are connected to centres of decision-making, and facilitate the participation of ordinary people not only in local and national civic politics but also in global issues, as members of transnational social movements (Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1998; Harcourt, 1999).
A number of women's information and communication networks were established after the first UN World conference on women in Nairobi in 1985 which established the Women's Decade. WOMENET, consisting of ten key networks based in nine countries, was established in 1992 with the express purpose of sharing research and exchanging information around the world, fast, and regularly produced a wealth of materials including quarterly journals, news magazines and newsletters; books, booklets and comics; posters and postcards; resource kits, manuals and training resources; occasional papers, research papers and bibliographies; news features and videos. The facilities used to produce this formidable array of materials at the time varied widely from the most basic (hands, pens/pencils, typewriters) to the most high-tech (computer, VCR, photocopier). Distribution channels also varied widely from domestic and international mail and delivery services, car, telephone, and meetings and workshops, through fax, modem, e-mail and electronic wires.
The Association for Progressive Communications established the Women's Networking Support Programme (APCWNSP) in 1993 (http://www.apcwomen.org) as part of the preparations for the Fourth World Conference on Women. They helped organizations to train women in the use of electronic mail and the World Wide Web and also to raise awareness about the urgency of broadening media and communications concerns to include the new ICTs and addressing women's access to ICT and women's participation in the determination of how such technologies are designed and deployed.
The Beijing Conference proved to be a formative moment, when the Chinese announced in March 1996 that the NGO Forum was being moved out of Beijing. Concerns that the change of site threatened the possibility for effective lobbying at the official conference, prohibited meaningful plenary sessions and offered limited telecommunications facilities produced a powerful response by women. The latent network structure was galvanised into action, including the Global Fax-net (Gitler, 1996; Frankson, 1996). During the conference itself, APCWNSP implemented a women-led initiative that provided Internet access, electronic communications and information services and support to over 30,000 women attending the conference and the NGO forum. One of the main goals of this initiative was, as APCWNSP says, to "demonstrate to other women this new technology was appropriate for and could be maintained by women".
Since then many further transborder debates and global consultations among
women have happened on-line in 'virtual fora" like GK97, Beijing-plus-Five
and the Women 200O conference. In preparation for the latter, the WomenAction
Coalition, together with WomenWatch, the UN website consortium for UN gender
activities, trained women to develop regional websites that contained information
about the process, provided reports and fostered participatory debate.
Tthe strategic use of ICTs in support of women's actions and agendas does many
things. It helps bring more attention, by women and by men, to issues of concern
to women. It reinforces solidarity campaigns. It can enhance traditional women's
networking activities. It can be used to defend the rights of women to participate
equally in civil and public life. The APC Women's Networking Support Programme
(APC-WNSP) works with women and their organisations to integrate the use of
ICTs in a way that strengthens womens' capacities, improves information
flows within their organisations, empowers individual members to do their work
and improves their organisation's overall ability to achieve its strategic objectives.
Strategic use also involves harnessing information and communications technology
to organize and transform information into knowledge and communicating that
knowledge to a wider global community to promote the development of cultures
that are based on values of equality, freedom and justice, including gender
equality.
Many barriers to actually achieving the goals set in Beijing have been articulated. Some enduring cultural values, societal norms and religious beliefs still place lower value on the contributions, work, ideas and lives of women and girls, Often women themselves and the issue of gender equality are poorly represented in decision-making and policy-making. Globally, the impacts of trade liberalization, globalization and privatization are contradictory and uneven, with disproportionate numbers of women being negatively affected.
Gender and Information Society: A complex set of issues:
In the 1990s, the focus shifted toward access to communications technologies, while the debates repeat many of the same concerns. The absence of women's voices and persepctives in the information socoiety indicates that 'new' information and communication technologies reflect many of the gender patterns in relation to power, values and exclusion that have been evident for decades in the 'old' media.
From APCWNSP's activities and research, it has usefully identified some of the most critical concerns in achieving gender equality and women's empowerment in the areas of ICTS
Access and Control
Neither women's access to ICTs (the opportunity to make use of ICTS) nor their control of ICTS (the power to decide how ICTS are used and who has access) are equal to men's. Diverse factors, including gender discrimination in jobs and education, social class, illiteracy, geographic location (North or South, urban or rural), mean that most of the world's women have no access to ICTs and as information dynamics accelerate their migration towards the Internet, people without access are bound to suffer greater exclusion.
But connectivity in itself is not enough, since know-how is equally or more important than the access itself. Criticism has been expressed of ICT development programs that all too often concentrate excessively on access to technology and information sources, as though it were sufficient to provide women with computers and modems for them to resolve all their development problems.
Education, Training and Skill Development
Obstacles here include the continuing higher illiteracy rates for women in developing countries; that the design of software that often does not respond to the needs of women and girls; that training methods are often 'ad-hoc,' alienating and not customized to women's needs; and that there are profound gender and cultural barriers to women's access to careers in technology;
APCWNSP suggest that "Learning practices for women should be extended to girls and women, made gender-sensitive (making training women-specific, ensuring ongoing user support, and mentoring in the communities where women live) and deepened (for women as users, technicians, policy- and change-makers)."
Industry and Labour
The growing ICT sector in many parts of the world has offered employment opportunities for women, particularly in data entry, medical transcription, geographical information systems and software production. But there are still powerful gender and age factors at work.
Labour is highly sex-segregated with women occupying disproportionately the lowest paid and least secure jobs. And while telework, flexi-time, and work from home arrangements bring women into the labour force, these are areas where women have few rights, meagre pay, and no health, social or job securities. Involvement in the wage economy in the public sphere doesn't necessarily alter the family division of labour so that women find themselves with dual or triple burdens. Poor working conditions, long-hours and monotonous work routines associated with ICTs are often injurious to women's health, environmental and other costs. Employment issues or concern to women working in technology relate to contractual terms, intensification of workloads, wages, training, health and safety such as VDU hazards and repetitive strain injuries.
On average, women are paid 30 - 40% less than men for comparable work. An ILO employment report in 2001 revealed a "digital gender gap" with women under-represented in new technology employment in both developed and developing countries. It also found that patterns of gender segregation were being reproduced in the information economy. The report adds: "Although pay inequality exists between those who have ICT skills and those who do not, pay polarization also exists within ICT use itself. This polarization is often gender-based." (cited in APCWNSP) Women in India have increased their share to 27% of professional jobs in the software industry. In the 1990s in the Caribbean and many other countries, thousands of women obtained jobs in the data-processing sector.
The age divide amongst women is also serious. While young women with familiarity with English are picking up the new service sector jobs, a vast number of over-35-year-olds have been made redundant, either because they are in declining industries, or have outdated skills.
Content and Language
Issues around content include the language used, the culture encoded and the nature of the representations constructed. These resonate with older debates about stereotyping and sexism in media portrayal. On the web, the dominance of English is particularly pronounced. Language barriers to information access require the development of applications like multilingual tools and databases, interfaces for non-Latin alphabets, graphic interfaces for illiterate women and automatic translation software.
Power and Decision Making
Although more women have jobs and expertise with ICTs, they lag behind men in access to decision-making and control of resources. Whether at the global or national levels, women are under-represented in all ICT decision-making structures including policy and regulatory institutions, ministries responsible for ICTs, boards and senior management of private ICT companies. Most often decision making in ICTs is treated as purely technical (for male experts), rather than political, where civil society viewpoints could and should be considered. Deregulation and privatisation of the telecommunications industry is also making decision-making in this sector less and less accountable to citizens and local communities further compounding decision-making and control of resources for women. Again this parallels long-standing debates within media studies about the lack of women in the higher eschelons of publishing, broadcasting and cultural policy-making (e.g. Gallagher, 1995). Beale (1998) has argued that cultural policy itself be seen as a technology of gender with a similar implication of co-construction and anti-essentialism that run through Sorensen's argument.
Representation is important in creating the conditions and regulations that will enable women to maximize their possibilities of benefiting from ICTs, and ensuring the accountability of the institutions that are responsible for developing ICT policies. More egalitarian representation would help create the conditions and regulations to enable women to maximize their possibilities of benefiting from ICTs, and to ensure the accountability of the institutions that are responsible for this valuable resource
Privacy and Security
Privacy, security and Internet rights - including secure online spaces where women feel safe from harassment, enjoy freedom of expression and privacy of communication and protection from 'electronic snooping' are also significant for women. The internet has fostered the creation of private online spaces which often spill over national boundaries, an important democratising part of its diffusion, vital for empowering exploited and victimised sections of society and well utilised by women.
But national legislation, such as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act in Britain, the Wiretapping Act in Japan and most recently the Homelands Security Act in the United States all potentially threaten private Internet communication, and may destroy democracy in the name of defending it against terrorism and cybercrime.
The interception of Internet communications is also justified to the general public as necessary for combatting the sexual exploitation of women and children, and to combat the activities of racist groups. But it is the creation of private spaces, where the victims of abuse can discuss between themselves and with others they trust and have chosen to talk to, that has, in fact, proven to be the most powerful weapon against both sexual exploitation and racial oppression.
Trafficking, Pornography and Censorship
Of course, the use of the Internet for pornography, sexual exploitation or
hate literature is of great concern to women.
Women themselves do not agree about how to deal with freedom of expression and
censorship. Some want technologies that not only filter content but will track
down creators and clients of pornographic websites while others see this as
itself an infringement of rights that might easily be extended to limit other
forms of freedom of expression. In a context of considerable debate, what is
clear and must be a priority is that women are informed, aware and involved
in the discussions and debates that must take place.
The Internet has allowed the voices of ordinary citizens and organisations lacking strong financial resources to be heard. With over 200 million users worldwide and an estimated 1 billion users by 2005, the Internet provides a unique public sphere where decisions that shape people's lives can be freely debated and considered. It allows small groups and individuals, men and women - previously working in isolation from one another - to communicate, network, share information and prepare actions in an unprecedented manner.
ICTs must be made available to all at an affordable cost and the development of infrastructure must ensure that marginalised groups are not further disadvantaged. This should be the strategic starting points for all concerned with gender equality and social transformation. In a globalised world that often undermines localised democratic institutions the Internet provides an essential means for defending and extending participatory democracy. The Internet and ICTs can strengthen diversity and provide a platform for a multitude of voices, a pluralism of ideas and opinions and a place for cross-cultural exchange. But this can only be true if developments are driven by a desire to preserve and enhance local and regional linguistic diversity and civil society has a voice in the policy formations that regulate control and ownership of the Internet.
But in the end the problems around lack of access, voice and decision-makiing in rletionship to ICTS only reflects more endemic patterns of gendered social and political inequality. The heart of the problem lies in broader patterns of social stratification so that in many ways, access to, use of and influence over ICTs follows a standard pattern of inequality. Indeed, it has been argued that too much focus has been paid to mechanisms and dynamics of exclusion, while the real challenge centres on how inclusion is to be acheived.
WSIS: Gendering the Agenda Once Again
The long and dynamic history of women's global activism has been very useful experience for promoting gender concerns within the civil society debates about the WSIS. The gender caucus is one of the best organised and best networked, with clear demands that gender advocates and a "gender lens" are involved in every aspect of planning and implementation of the WSIS.
The increasingly important role of Southern women is evident in the fact that WOUGNET, based in Uganda, has taken on board the development of the gender caucus websites and hosting the electronic debates (http://www.wougnet.org/WSIS/genderstatement.html).
The gendered implications of the information society involves a complex set
of interlocking issues. A central concern is about the widening gender digital
divide within the global digital divide. The key recommendations of the Gender
Caucus are summed up in the contribution to the Bamako statement
http://www.wougnet.org/WSIS/wsisgcrecommendations.html).
These are:
The aim is a World Information Society that contributes to human development and gender equality. So once again there is no shortage of women's voices, analytic materials, detailed case studies, international organizational support, NGO involvement and grassroots need. Can the international community hear? With what ears will it listen?
It seems clear that there is a need not only to analyse the specific relationships that women have with technology in different sectors and in different national and cultural locations, but also a more general need to understand the relationship between gender and communication. Norris (2001:92) has noted that broader patterns of social stratification "shape not just access to the virtual world, but also full participation in other more common forms of information and communication technologies."
The women-centered approach in relation to media has focused on the need for better and more adequate representation, both in content and in employment arenas, (Gallagher, 1995) and is coupled with the need for recognition and empowerment of women's voices (Sreberny, 2002) Recognition is not at odds with struggles for material redistribution, rather the chance for social esteem and acheivement can be the basis for demands for greater equality (Honneth, 2002) Gender-sensitive approaches argue about the social construction of gendered positions through the processes of developing, diffusing and utilising communications technologies. But women still often lack the critical mass of numbers and weight of speaking at international fora; and it is still a rare occasion for men to voluntarily recognise the issue of gender equality. That probably means not forsaking the "women in media/technology" argument for the "gender and technology" one, but pursuing both together.
Women seem particularly adept at imagining and linking global and local, although
not without significant internal disputation about power as differentiated by
class, race and geography. The future is global, participatory and more gender
equal.
Women still hold up half the sky!