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Focal point 5	Information Society
Panel 5.1	"Women Contesting the 'Information Society': From the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing to the World Summit on the Information Society and Beyond"

Friday, 09.09.2005, 5-7 pm
Heinrich-Boell-Foundation Berlin, Germany
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| Speakers

Anita Gurumurthy, IT for Change, India
Gloria Bonder, UNESCO Chair on Women, Science and Technology in Latin America, Argentina
Heike Jensen, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Germany
Muthoni Wanyeki, FemNet, Kenya

Facilitator: Marianne Seger, WSIS Gender Caucus

Access to the media and the formulation of media strategies have played a vital role in many contemporary women's movements right from their inception. Today, both access and strategizing are more important than ever, given the uneven proliferation of information and communication technology networks within and among countries and the rise of huge transnational media conglomerates. Women now demand a central role as shapers of the so-called Information Society, and many regard the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) as central strategic tools for political networking, for expressing solidarity with each other and for fighting for their rights.

The potential and importance of media and ICTs is not only felt on the local, national or regional levels, but also on the level of global feminist strategizing, which took shape in the context of United Nations summits and world conferences and has proliferated. Particularly the world conferences on women in Nairobi (1985) and in Beijing (1995) put media issues squarely on the women's agenda. Most recently, gender advocates have been engaged in the context of the UN World Summit on the Information Society.

Early feminist media activists sought to eradicated stereotyped and sexist depictions of women and pornography in different types of media; and they fought for media to become tools to promote norms and values such as women's rights, peace and respect. Also, women sought to become more actively involved in the generation of media content, most notably at the level of decision-making in media institutions. Over time, these issues have indeed remained more or less unsolved, while new media concerns have emerged and new feminist goals have been identified in addition. Central new goals are the ones of employing new media for feminist networking, of creating media hardware and software that better answers women's needs and social concerns, of bridging the digital divide including the gender digital divide, and of influencing media politics and media regulation so that media serve the public good and have a democratizing impact.

Thus it appears that media design and functioning, new information and communication technologies (ICTs) as well as the overall media landscapes are now clearly and thoroughly politicized. And at the most basic level, the rights to communicate and to have access to media and/or to ICTs increasingly appear as prerequisites for the protection, promotion and fulfillment of women's human right, for gender equality, non-discrimination and sustainable development. Many different assessments and models exist of the shapes that media and media landscapes should take.

The workshop "Women Contesting the 'Information Society'", seeks to create a space for representatives of feminist networks and initiatives in different geo-political regions to compare experiences and perspectives on the Information Society. We want to assess successes and failures of various feminist approaches and endeavors targeting the media, taking into account the specific contexts of social developments that have occurred in distinct regions of the world. This also involves a reflection on the developments within feminist media strategizing itself, its various battle grounds and centers of focus. Some questions conducive to developing a common basis of understanding and for further strategizing are the following ones:

What are the characteristics of each media landscape and media infrastructure? (e.g. media monopolies versus regulation against monopolies, state-controlled media versus private or community-owned media, reliance on specific media such as the radio, digital divides, etc.)
Which social groups of men and women generate media content, create technologies or regulate the media landscape politically? Which social groups are barred from these tasks?
Who uses which media for what purposes? What kind of bearing do the media have on the socialization of the genders?
Which have been the central feminist aims and strategies regarding media, and which reactions or forms of change have they provoked?
What influence or importance can be ascribed to the UN world summits with respect to the formulation of feminist media strategies and the changes that have come about in different regions?
On the basis of these experiences and assessments, what kind of aims, strategies and forms of feminist cooperation seem most viable for the future?

| Papers

Gurumuthy, Anita (2005)

"Women's Struggles in the IS - From Beijing to WSIS and Beyond"

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Gurumuthy, Anita (2005)

"Women Contesting the 'Information Society': From the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995) to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS 2003, 2005) and Beyond"

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Bonder, Gloria (2005) "Which 'building' for the Information Society in Latin America: a challenge in discourse and practices for gender advocates and researchers"

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