Interview with Malgorzata (Gosia) Tarasiewicz from NEWW - Polska
Poland, Aug 4
APC WNSP member Malgorzata (Gosia) Tarasiewicz from The Network of East-West-Women/ NEWW - Polska shares how she got involved with ICTs and the internet reality for women in Central Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, from her perspective as Executive Director of NEWW-Polska.
“Women should not only be users of ICT but really have an impact on the way they operate so that it is not women who adapt to the ICTs but the way ICTs are used is adapted to the needs of women.”
What first got you involved with the use of ICT's?
I became involved with the ICTs after I started to cooperate with the Network of East West Women. We had a founding meeting in Dubrovnik three weeks before the war in Yugoslavia and quite soon after that NEWW developed its on-line program.
I remember receiving e-mails from Kosovo during the conflict there from a woman who cooperated with NEWW. She could inform people about her situation through our listserves. We did not depend on mainstream media and we could learn about the events from a women's perspective and from the perspective of an average person. I was attracted to the ICT for the immense possibilities they have created for organizing a movement and supporting women in need and in otherwise difficult to reach places with the difficult circumstances in our
postcommunist reality.
When I moved to NY and started to work for NEWW in 1996 Internet became my
main tool of communicating with the CEE/CIS region. I was amazed by the opportunities it created and soon I started to use it in a project I implemented for Amnesty International in Poland on the International Criminal Court. Using the tool of ICTs, we created a network of people in CEE/CIS supporting the creation of the ICC!
When in 1999 I became a director of the Polish Chapter of NEWW one of the most important things for me was to have a website which would represent our activities and really serve its readers with information and contacts. We have reached now ca. 60 000 visits a month to our website! I was interested in the use of Internet as a tool for informing women in these countries in Europe which were to join the EU regarding the costs and benefits of accession and on ways they could- at least to a small extent - use the process for their own goals. For example, now we are using our website to spread information on monitoring development aid by the EU in some countries in the CIS region. Because of Internet it was possible to create a meaningful group of women and women NGOs around lobbying actions, Bejijng process, etc.
What are some key learning highlights around women and ICTS in your years of experience with NEWW?
Even though we use ICTs for the purpose of supporting women's rights, ICT policy has still not been shaped or even influenced by women from the CEE/CIS region unlike in, for example, Asia. The WSIS process had a very low presence of women representing the issues of CEE/CIS. Women’s organisations are largely unprepared to use the ICT-focused programs. That is why in my view the introduction of Gender and ICT Evaluation Methodology (GEM) and the creation of the Women's Network Support Programme in CEE has been really important.
GEM
project conducted in the region by the WNSP showed ICTs' potential to empower women through ICT focused projects. The GEM project also
contributed to establishing the emerging gender and ICT advocates’ network in the region. Also an important event was the Networking for Change and Empowerment Forum that took place in June, 2004 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Six members of the APC WNSP from CEE had the opportunity to meet with over 40 activists, researchers, members of civil society organisations, donor
agencies, and other institutions, many of whom have been working in gender and ICTs for more than a decade.
Of course there is still a lot to do in the CEE/CIS region. There are some moments when I think that we've made a breakthrough, at least in some countries like Poland; e.g. last year when I was contacted by a woman from the Ministry of Science and Information because she wanted
to learn more about the use of ICTs for women's empowerment in order to use it in the strategic plan she had been preparing.
I think that we need very much international cooperation, networking and learning from other regions.
What is the ICT reality for women in your region today?
In the region we need to learn to use the resources that are available on women and ICTs in the EU. We have to do gender mainstreaming in local administration and government institutions dealing with ICTs
and we should speak out more on the need to give more women access and make them benefit from ICTs. We should attempt to change the
institutions and policy that shape the ICT world and collaborate with women from other regions in order to achieve this. And we should not only be users of ICT but really have an impact on the way they operate so that it is not women who adapt to the ICTs but the way ICTs are used is adapted to the needs of women.
As far as general access is concerned it is often expensive, at least in some countries but at the same time it is more and more accessible. I was surprised to find it even in a country which can only dream about democracy i.e. Byelarus that in small towns internet is available at the post office for a really small price. It is another story that the content of e-mails might be censored in such places. More and more women are interested in using internet in the region. I think that cafes should be more women-friendly and also that women should have their own computers ("a computer of one's own" should be our slogan in the region, as we had talked before about a "room of one's own").
What are some highlights of your current work?
At the moment NEWW is actively using ICTs in our work.
When NEWW first started training, women organisations in our part of the world hardly used internet. Finding out about a possibility to communicate with the rest of the women's movement, especially in a situation of armed conflict or very difficult economic situation of transition has created really revolutionary opportunities. It was possible to build a movement in the CEE/CIS region without travelling, spending a lot of time on sending letters, bulletins, pictures and leaflets using a regular mail which often never reach their destination. E-mail was a breakthrough in our part of the world as it probably had been everywhere else. NEWW created a manual in English for women in feminist NGOs who wanted to use internet, create listserves, set e-mail accounts and create websites. I have been
learning from such a manual myself and my life has changed tremendously because I gained new contacts, learned about events, could read personal accounts of events by people who participated in them. Of course this kind of training has been very empowering.
We are in communication with the region of CEE/CIS thanks to ICTs and thanks to the Global Fund for Women we could develop our website,
listserves, on-line bulletins in English and Polish and focal points in four countries in CEE/CIS - hopefully developing more in the nearest future. We have projects in Tajikistan, Ukraine, Georgia, Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. We are also involved in the Steering Committee of the European Feminist Forum which will take place in 2008 in Warsaw and which is a conference of European feminists. One of the topics that will be discussed is women and ICTs. The WNSP group from our region is preparing a working group on the ICTs.
