By María Suárez Toro & Margaret Thompson 
 
 

Creative strategies by women around the world for using new information technologies (ICTs) by linking them with traditional media and communication venues were the focus of the KnowHow Conference in Kampala, Uganda, from July 23-27, 2001. 
 
 

Bandana Rana, a journalist from NEPAL  in the KnowHow CyberCafe

Also discussed by more than 200 participants from 45 countries were ways that ICTs can be used as tools to enhance the human rights of women and people including in war and conflict situations, and also to help combat poverty, domestic violence, and other social, economic and political problems faced by women worldwide.

Subtitled, “A Safari Into the Cross-Cultural World of Women’s Knowledge Exchange,” the KnowHow conference resulted in a final declaration that reflected the understanding of many participants that tackling the digital divide including the gender gap requires not only strategies and actions regarding ICTs directly, but also strategies that reflect the social, economic and political conditions of women at the local level, and that are designed to promote social change. 
 
 

“Information is not an end in itself...unless information is used for social change to make the lives of other people better, it becomes an ivory tower of information and it will only be as good as the paper that it is written on.”  (Dr. Musimbi Kanyor, President of ISIS-WICCE Board of Directors of Uganda).

Ugandan participant at KnowHow

The Know How Conference was aimed at increasing and improving the visibility of African women's issues, and discussing concerns and progress made in information centers, archives and services. It also served as a venue for the sharing of best practices and for the development of a plan of action with recommendations for generating and sharing information by and with rural women activists.

Highlights of Recommendations

Women’s Access to ICTs & Media in Conflict Situations

• Participants recommended that in conflict and post-conflict situations, that ICTs could be used to provide women with a means of communication including early warning systems, to enable women living in conflict zones needing urgent humanitarian assistance could reach out and get help quickly. 

Sandra Gómez of Colombia reading the resolution in support of the  Colombian women's peace march

Women at the KnowHow conference acted accordingly by sending declarations of support to women in Nigeria, who had been staging a massive protest against US-based multinational Chevron Texaco, and also to women in Colombia, who on July 26, held a huge peace march to take over the city of Bogotá, demanding peace and a formal place for women at the peace negotiations table.  The Colombian resolution was announced by Sandra Gómez of the Red Nacional de Mujeres de Colombia (National Network of Colombian Women).

• Also at the conference, FIRE proposed a resolution that the United Nations appoint a special rapporteur who will monitor implementation of UN Special Rapporteur on Media & Communications that will have as one of its main mandates, to report about the use of media in conflict and war situations.  This proposal was later included in the final Kampala declaration. 

Efforts to Bridge Urban-Rural Gap

Closing the digital divide is a common goal of many ICT campaigns today, but merely substituting new technologies for traditional communication venues is not necessarily the answer, according to many of the speakers at the KnowHow Conference.   The challenge of including indigineous and rural women in particular in online dialogue and debate requires first looking at what media and communications venues are available and used widely among these groups, and then looking at ways that new ICTs may enhance rather than substitute these common venues.

Combining oral language, street theatre, Power Point presentations, internet radio broadcasting, community radio stations, CD Roms, newspapers, and other media illustrates that for women the best chance of transforming our situation and social change is not by substituting one for the other but by combining these different forms in creative ways. 

As stated by Juliana Omale, a reporter for KnowHow GEM, “New technologies can only become relevant for African women if they are interfaced with what already exists.” 

This was the focus of another recommendation of the KnowHow Declaration:

• Participants vowed to initiate and strengthen efforts to bridge rural/urban gap, to conduct needs based training on ICTS for women, online tutorials on web technology, and training on hardware and software of web technology. 

FIRE Radio Webcasting Workshop

Examples of these outreach efforts were evident at the conference with several training workshops, including a radio webcasting workshop by FIRE.  This  session attracted about 50 people from different countries who learned about how FIRE uses multiplication strategies with Internet radio and traditional radio and other media to enhance the potential of ICTs in broadcasting the perspectives of women worldwide. 

As part of the workshop, FIRE conducted a live webcast with women from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and also conducted interviews at the FIREPLACE in the CyberCafe with participants at the KnowHow Conference.  

Participants were highly positive in their evaluations of this Internet radio workshop, with comments such as, "This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen in the use of ICTs," and "it was very very inspiring," and "I was very impressed--I thought it cost millions!"
 

A commentary in KnowHow Gem stated, "The richness of this year’s Know How conference, and the significance of holding it in Africa, is that we have started to see how these technologies can be appropriated.  Our Latin American sisters have shown us how, through the Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE), the Internet can be linked to radio, the most widely used and effective form of mass communication in Africa.”

Marie Jeanne Mujangi  of the Democratic Republic of Congo  on a live FIRE webcast

Need for More Resources & Research

• Also underscored in the final declaration was the need to tap resources to increase rural women's access to information and to support existing surveys and studies on the information needs of rural women and to recommend new baseline research. 

Also presented at the conference was research by Dafne Sabanes Plou and Fatma Alloo of the Association of Progressive Communications (APC) Women's Networking Support Programme (APC-WNSP) using the Gender Evaluation Methodology.  This approach is designed to analyze and transform unequal power relations based on gender in the use of ICTs by working with women and their organizations to integrate ICTs in strategic ways to facilitate social change.

FIRE is also conducting a large multi-method reception study of its Internet audience, that includes a quantitative and qualitative survey, analysis of FIRE webpage statistics, and case studies.
 

Expanding Women's Voices in Mainstream Media

Although women are creating their own media and communication venues through ICTs, a number of sessions at the conference focusing on efforts to bring a gender perspective to mainstream media.   The final declaration regarding engendering women's information through mainstream media included a recommendation that: 

• Urged women’s information and communication organizations to integrate a gender perspective . into mainstream media and use mainstream media as a potent tool for social change. It was also suggested that they provide gender and feminist training and networking support for media practitioners. Likewise, the mainstream media should develop and adopt a gender policy.

Including a Gender & Human Rights Perspective in the WSIS Process
 

• The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) will be held in December 2003, so the KnowHow Declaration included a recommendation that the WSIS gender caucus develop policy and perspectives on gender issues and see to it that gender and human rights to education are at the center of all WSIS planning and preparations

Access to ICTs for women is not the only issue, but empowerment also involves women having the means to develop their own content rather than only having access to existing content.  This will help shift the current linguistic, cultural, gender, racial, political and other imbalances in content that exist today.
 

Devaki Jain, feminist economist  and activist from India

Devaki Jain, an Indian economist & researcher, and feminist activist & writer, noted in her keynote address at the conference the importance of women producing their own knowledge, in addition to building women's networks to share knowledge.

Likewise, Lynn Pugh of IIAV (International Information Center & Archives of the Women's Movement) of the Netherlands noted in her final summary of the conference the affirmation by participants that the next KnowHow conference should deal not only with the How but also with the What women want to say in terms of content of ICTs.
 

KnowHow Conference Background

The KnowHow Conference was hosted by ISIS-WICCE (Women’s International Cross Cultural Exchange) in Uganda, ISIS International-Manila, and the International Information Center & Archives of the Women’s Movement (IIAV) based in the Netherlands.

It was held in conjunction with the 8th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, also known as the Women's World Congress 2002, held last July 21 to 26, also in Kampala and organized by the Department of Women and Gender Studies of the Makarere University.

FIRE's participation in the KnowHow Conference was made possible by IICO (Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation), and Sister Fund.

FIREPLACE Interviews at KnowHow