SERVER DONNE Release 1.4: freedom and independence in the implementation of gender information systems.

 

 

I have a degree in Political Sciences, but I don’t remember the courses I attended anymore because at that time, in 1983, even before graduation I used to program softwares and to study computer operative systems’ installation handbooks. I never learnt English to make conversation or to read literature, but please just give me the installation handbook of a machine and it’ll have no more secrets for me. With this English I surf the Internet and to write this speech I met you all on the Internet looking for you on the web!!!

I’m here with Elvira, that will help me to express my views on the Information Communication Technology.

I’m a ‘cyborg’ in D. Haraway’s meaning in Manifesto for Cyborgs where she describes the cyborg world:

-          a place where you live with the machines in a symbiotic way: often computers are my best friends, they never let you down!

-          where the identities are always partially defined: woman, white, European and…Lara Croft’s sister? Even though she fascinates me, my self-representation goes not in her’s but in another direction: that of Donna Haraway’s Modest_Witness@ .

-          a place full of contradictory point of views: I’m both the head of a computer center at the University, expression of the informatics of domination, and an activist in the cyborg revolution. I’m here to tell you how we managed, together with the friends of the Orlando Association, to build up a project that keeps together the feminist critics to the ‘technobiopower’, and the promotion of actions so that the women can get hold of (gain possession of) the ICT (technological feminism).

 

This is the 4^th draft – you can read the previous versions at – of a paper witch I presented to a group of Palestinian women during a lecture given by Orlando’s members in Birzeid, in 1995, to the women who participated in the ICT forum at Torino Book Fair in the same year - 1995, and at the Amsterdam IIAV Conference in 1998.

In all these years, besides my job at the University and my activity as responsible person/coordinator of the information area of the Women’s Documentation and Research Center of Bologna, I made any effort to spread ICT use through courses and workshops for women. I make not to present anything new,  written after 1994, because the idea we propose is still very relevant: to assemble around machines and information systems (nowadays called “portals”) women with sysop-like technical skills which could possibly have both the consciousness and the political awareness to produce a “sustainable development” in the ICT circulation. If we take a look at the new professional profiles defined by the New Economy, we see that the top of  the organizational pyramid (both at a conceptual and managerial level) is held by men, while the base is more and more composed by women, attracted in numbers by  the teleworking (a new form of social exclusion).  This phenomenon can be explained also by the decrease in the number of women who undertake studies related to technology and computer science .

That's why I didn'y change the content of my speech, since the idea of the “server donne” project is still unlickily experience and we’re here to spread it and to ask for support. Until now, we’ve been contacted only by few women with information technology skills ; the “server donne” gets more than 4.000 hits every day even though the pages are mainly in Italian, and we had few exchanges in skills with other women, Italians or not. The “skilled women” are too busy and well paid in their companies, and those who just in touch with us had not enough awareness and they had no interest at all in the highly political content of the “server donne” project.

So we keep on proposing an idea summed up in this title: “Women’s Voices, Visions and

Actions. Gender Information System”.

The philosophy behind it is in short:

Following the introduction of data transmission and information technologies, particulary women may risk exclusion; and they risk in different ways according with different age groups and cultural levels. We are therefore convinced that the new communication technologies cannot casually be submitted to the rules of the market, tranforming the woman citizen in a mere consumer of electronical services.

We stated that in 1996.

According to the last american survey (Mediametrix and Jupiter) women overcome men, being the 50,4% of the Internet surfers (in Europe we are still only the 30%). But with interesting features – the journalist writes - regarding the e.commerce, because women are big goods’ consumers, and regarding the Internet services, because women are experte in on chat lines. I’m quoting the journalist here, to underline how distorted and illusory is the women’s know how if just mere Internet users’ statistics are considered: “The Net is a "she?" crowded with facetious little girls with navel rings, aspirant mummies chasing baby carriages….Housewives with aprons asking themselves if they can still wear a see-through nightgown. Surfing, at this point, is quite big a word. It’s more correct to talk about coastal navigation. Confirming some of the most rooted clichés, the female surfing seem to disdain the wide range adventure in the unknown sea of sites, so dear to the male public.”   This analysis is confirmed by the typology of women’s sites, also in the italian web area, mainly dedicated to the e.commerce like “Super Eva” etcetera. 

But let’s go back to the philosophy of our project. The introduction of the new communication technologies must become a personal training tool and an instrument to support the growth of new collective subjects.

Moreover, the “gender salience”, and the whole knowledge of the practices processed and experienced by women, should shape the design of the transformation of our cities and our territories.

And now let’s examine the aims and the goals:

The project aims at the introduction of the “gender salience” not only at the level of the whole informations and the services offered, but at the more ambitious level of ICT software and hardware. There’s a wide gap between the women projects and the male mark in all the technologies and the alternative visions of telematics and information “worlds”.

This technology, through a client/server system (interaction between service supply networks (servers) and users (clients)), permits the efficient flow of complicated information at low cost, without the involvement of management staff from the vast computer centres or editorial teams from the main publishing houses, which until now have included a minimal number of women among them. ICT, however, needs to be adapted to our needs in order to avoid the conspiracy of silence of a communication medium which is based on the sexist language of neutrality. The processes of standardization which are fundamental to the spread of technology throughout the world have never raised the problem of gender difference and it has never occurred to anyone in the various ISO committees that the women's culture might offer an interesting input, if only in terms of methodology.

 

It is obviuos that one or more female’s associations or networks cannot affect the market where the big hardware and languages producers stand out, but these women’s groups can affect the market at the software level, offering appropriate interfaces to projects/programs marked by gender difference.

This idea is still relevant because the democracy put forward by the technology enthusiasts is illusory: women’s networks can work – with other subjects- on the double democratization (double sovereignty) of the Virtual Space inside the public space known as “teledemocracy”, through peculiar networks built by NGOs, social enterprises, youth centres etcetera. During the 1995-96 European Internet boom, Bologna’s municipality was the first European city  - and the only case worldwide, said the Internet news – to fund (finance?) and create a civic network with a free access for all the citizens.  As soon as the Council had its Server also the women of the city had their machine they could manage in complete political independence.   

 

But besides the “visions” and the theoretical level, which isn’t a minor factor at all, what remains - according to the methodological tradition of the women’s association I belong to- is the practical realization of the immediate idea, the “making” level. 

From 1995 to present day  we worked along two directions: the creation of the actual information system by means of the "server donne (which is detailed in the slides behind me) and the setting up of a women’s centre (Information and telematic laboratory) dealing with communication technology. In the laboratory, a sort of technical bridge head has been created which brings together staff from the CDD (Women's Documentation Centre) and from the library in order to provide technical management of the "Internet tea room" and CDD/library computer park (about 10 terminals, all permanently online). Training courses are provided here (the "tea room" becomes a classroom), as well as technical advice for women who make connect via modem. Various technical problems are sorted out, system operations are carried out on the server and, together with computer graphics experts, group editorial services are offered to women, women's groups and women’s networks which want to publish information on the Internet.

As a result of the collaboration between women in politics and women with technical and information skills, Internet communication services (discussion forums, web sites, etc.) are available for women's political projects throughout the world. The CCD/library is run by the Orlando Women's Association which includes among its members women from Italian politics, women academics and countless women involved in political projects involving the setting up of international groups in Bosnia, Palestine, Albania etc..

This way we managed to create a gender portal, which contains communication services, information flows, archives and  data bases you can query with a gender language. This language can’t be a neutral one, it must be a language able to represent our subjectivity. The contents of this language are the expression of a wider political project meant to give sense and meaning to the new information related tool.

 

Bologna, September 2000

Marzia Vaccari