FROM: ELECTRONIC WITCHES TO: SPYFOOD@NEXT.COM.AU SUBJECT: ELECTRONIC WITCHES REPORT ________________________________________________________________________ [IMAGE] Electronic Witches was transformed in 1994 from a dream to a project that was pursued in women's spare time to receiving initial funding. The project started within the Women's Information and Documentation Center in Zagreb and became an independent project within the feminist movement in the Yugoslav successor states with special support from the Zagreb Women's Lobby and B.a.B.e.. (Be active Be emancipated, women's human rights group). This paper highlights Electronic Witches' achievements, experiences, forward looking strategy, and resource needs. Electronic Witches Communication Technology for Women Electronic Witches started working in June, 1994 with two women, working part time. Cecilia Hansen Poulsen left to study in England after three months and Kathryn Turnipseed continues to develop this project. We have trained seventy-two women who represent twenty-eight organizations. The groups we have worked with include the Center for Women War Victims, B.a.B.e., Little Step and the Anti-War Campaign in Croatia; Vive Zene, Medica Women's Therapy Center, and Zene 21 in Bosnia & Hercegovina, the Autonomous Women's Center against Sexual Violence, Women in Black, Arkadia and the Center for Girls in Serbia; and the League of Albanian Women, Doctors of the World, the Council for Defense of Human Rights and Freedom and the Club of Correspondents in Kosovo. We have produced gender sensitive training materials, and co-authored a user's guide to the communications software. Two women in Serbia and one woman in Bosnia & Hercegovina are now providing e-mail support to other women. We provided modems to three groups and in several locations we installed software and set up user accounts on the ZaMir network (the regional communication network which is affiliated with the Association for Progressive Communication). Electronic Witches works closely with the men who developed the ZaMir network and Kathryn is a member of the support staff in Belgrade, Pristine, and Zagreb. We advocate broader inclusion of women on the support teams. We post articles from our travels in e-mail conferences and with the help of friends have had them published in magazines. Kathryn attended the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) Preparatory meeting for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and helped to draft amendments to the media and communications segment of the final document. Connections were made with women who are experienced advocates for women's right to access to and control of media and communications; this included women representing FIRE, Technomama, WEDO, Media Watch, and several journalists from Europe. Our training has supported women in overcoming their lack of confidence and discomfort with information technologies and we have undertaken to reach out to women with different computer ability and experience. We have witnessed many women's attitudes toward e-mail shift, from skepticism or distaste to curiosity or enthusiasm, as they watch their friends quickly incorporate e-mail into their work and personal communications. As peers easily learn to use e-mail many women's fears or insecurity about their capability to bend technology to their needs recede. There are already a handful of women who with the confidence which comes from using e-mail and a little additional training will be capable of training other women. This includes a woman who has recently discovered her aptitude for computers defying, as she joked, the stereotyped view "statistically I am too old to do this." Roughly one-third of women who we trained had little or no previous computer experience and many of the women who received training do not have access to a computer on a regular basis. Women's lack of experience was often expressed in shyness and lack of confidence. Women who have used typewriters for many years did not immediately see the linkage of skills as computer technology has been mysticized. Individual women expressed a high level of anxiety about "destroying" information exhibiting a belief that their inexperience would translate into accidentally deleting important information or breaking the computer. To overcome this women were encouraged to drag their fingers along the keyboard. Relief was visible when women recognized that virtually everything can be undone by selecting escape or restarting the computer. The amount of information available over e-mail often elicits exclamations of excitement and anticipation from many women. E-mail is seen as a mechanism to reduce the isolation under which a majority of women in the region are now forced to live. Many women during the training shared their ideas for how to use e-mail including one woman who plans to use the stories of women posted in APC women's conferences in a literacy program. By the end of each training session every woman had practiced reading, writing, and sending messages and conducting topic searches. A high retention level is unlikely in places where women's access to computers and modems is low or non-existent. Training sessions exposed that women continue to have unequal access to new technologies and women living in rural areas have less access to computer equipment and training than do women living in urban areas. Our experience also confirms our view that when women do have access to technology, trainers - many times who are men - often do not teach in a way that is relevant for women. Broader Learning Electronic Witches is afforded the opportunity to meet women from divergent backgrounds who are pursuing a diversity of life and work ambitions and living under widely varying levels of state violence. This provides a rich view into gender relations, which cut across ethnic, class, and urban/rural divisions. Universally women expressed frustration with the habit of the local and foreign media of making women visible only as symbols, victims or dependents. Rarely do journalists widen their view to include pictures of women in all our diversity taking effective action. We do not read about the lesbian who raised money to support a lesbian and gay human rights group; the woman who returned from exile to initiate a literacy program; or the woman who lives in a refugee camp and is learning to use computers. Travelling in Bosnia & Hercegovina, Croatia, Kosova and Serbia generates curiosity about how the militarization of society and being displaced from one's home effects gender relations, how women interact with the State and with intergovernmental organizations who have swooped in to "aid, protect and develop." We are curious about what gender stereotypes are transferred by international personnel, what commitment international agencies have to gender parity among its staff and in its programs, and how many organizations have development programs which involve women in meaningful roles. The status of women in each country can be assessed and the same story can be heard irrespective of geography. Regardless of the level of military activity women are losing rights, have less visibility in the public sphere and face militarisms narrow construction of femininity into sexualized woman or that of the stay at home caring wife and mother. Looking Forward ..Our experience to date has revealed the need to connect e-mail training to other computer skills and to other forms of communication. In addition to continuing our e-mail training in 1995 we would like to:*Raise funds to support trainers in Kosova, Serbia, Bosnia & Hercegovina and Macedonia for 12 months.* Develop materials so that introductory computer training can be offered to women with little or no computer experience. *Include training on Pretty Good Privacy software to address women's concerns about police decoding of e-mail messages. *Raise funds for or secure donations of computers and modems. *Begin to work with women activists in Macedonia . *Work with women who are living in refugee camps. These possibilities will be refined collaboratively with women in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia who have been a part of our training to date. Recognizing that in crisis situations long-term goals are submerged in the urgency of the moment, Electronic Witches is acutely aware of the need to further our participatory working with women to develop goals and activities which address both practical/daily and structural/strategic needs. We are committed to genuinely involving wome n in utilizing communication technologies to strengthen our groups and to fully participate in the processes of social change. Resource Needs *Computers *High speed modems *Funding to support a regional network of trainers* Funding to participate in the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, September 1995 Contributors Electronic Witches receives support from many individuals and organizations which makes our work possible. We would like to especially recognize Vesna K. and Sarah for believing in our capabilities when we were full of doubt. We appreciate the care and encouragement we receive from Lepa, Jelica and Violeta in Belgrade. Janet, Lisa and Igo make our work in Pristine fun and well organized. In Zenica we depend upon Selma, Duska and Kirsten for support and creative thinking. Mica and Biljana in Zagreb h ave enabled our work with their enduring patience and support. Electronic Witches receives tremendous support from the members of the ZaMir support teams in Zagreb, Belgrade, Pristine, and Sarajevo. Ognjen, Srdjan, Eric, Wam, Andreas, Burkie, Sasa, Miroslav, Michael, Saly, Akan, Meho, Murat, Mladen and Haris are constant in their willingness to answer our endless technical questions. Barbara (Virtual Sisterhood) and Sabine (FemNet) also provide answers to our technical questions and endless hours of discussion about gender dimensions of electronic communications. We are grateful for the material support we have received from the Danish Peace Foundation, the Delphi-Star project, Brad Wilkinson, Frank Wilkinson, Rich Montero and Oxfam. Contact Information Kathryn Turnipseed c/o B.a.B.e. Petreticev trg 341000 Zagreb Croatia tel/fax +385 1 419 302 _________________________________________________________________ electronicwitches_zg@zamir-zg.ztn.zer.de