Francophone Women Weaving the Web

by Nicole Nepton

The French Women’s Web

1997. Naïvely, I’m looking for the French feminist Web but it doesn’t exist yet. Disappointed to realize the women’s movement is still far from getting much from information and communication technologies (ICT), I get involved in a project dedicated to facilitate appropriation of ICT by women’s groups of Quebec.

Internet au féminin
http://www.netfemmes.org

I try to be patient.

In 1999, working on the French section of the Womenspace

Campagne Internet des femmes/Women’s Internet Campaign
http://www.womenspace.ca/Campaign/Fr/intro.html

I discover we’re starting to have a Web of our own. It shows the vitality of the French-speaking feminist movement and offers new possibilities to get involved. We can use it to get information on more and more subjects in our own language, get news from women of French-speaking countries, learn more about our networks and of course, use discussion lists and chat. From my point of view, it was about time!

To share my findings, I wove them together on the Web

La toile des femmes francophones
http://www.cam.org/~abe/net2.html

and maintain a page about The Best French Feminist Web Sites

Les meilleurs sites de la toile des femmes
http://www.womenspace.ca/Campaign/Fr/meilleurs.html

In addition, the Campagne Internet des femmes/Women’s Internet Campaign shows all kinds of ways women are using Internet : to share resources and knowledge, to help each other, to promote groups, to inform, to do campaigns, to create spaces for women, to mobilize. Our Web shows us we can do much more with ICT than sending emails and getting information from the WWW every once in a while.

A Stimulating Non Traditional Experience

In Quebec, more and more women’s groups are getting connected and exchanging information using the electronic network of the French-speaking feminists

NetFemmes
http://www.netfemmes.org

but few are ready to go further in their usage of ICT : they are lacking resources and knowledge. Of course, our provincial government seems to consider that to have given two years of funding for the "Internet au féminin" project was enough to get women’s groups ready to use ICT, while it was just a start.

I didn't have much hope of finding a women's group from Montreal ready to use the new knowledge a cyberfeminist like me has been developing, until last spring when I met Femmes regroupées en options non traditionnelles.

FRONT
http://www.front.qc.ca

is a provincial organization whose members are women who work or study in non traditional fields, and associations involved with non-trads. Non traditional fields are described as sectors where there are fewer than 33% of women in that particular line of work. The list is not a short one: plumbers, pipefitters, mechanics, fire fighters, electricians, truckers, heavy machine operators, power engineers, carpenters, and on and on...

Non-trads are isolated. They are a minority in their classroom, their workshop, their union, spread out all over Quebec, and their studying and working conditions are improving very slowly. In this context, FRONT saw ICT as a dream tool to reach them more easily, to give them the opportunity to relate to each other, while making more people aware of what it is to be a non-trad, and to get closer to the day when non-trads will be allowed to study and work, without having to face all kinds of discrimination and alone create the integration process into male environments.

I’ve jumped at the opportunity to create FRONT’s Web site. Today, in its 100 pages can be found most of the articles of La fronde published since 1998, a synthesis of the discussions we had at our last provincial conference, our press releases, a directory of the non traditional network of Quebec, advice, an annotated selection of Web sites, and much more. Our Web site is there for the non-trad who would like to meet a cybermentor to get some help in her integration into an hostile working environment, join a discussion list or enjoy the opportunity to recognize herself in the words of other women who made choices still uncommon today.

About 40 women are participating in our young women’s discussion list and the Web site visits keep growing faster than expected. From June through the end of December 1999, we counted 3 000 visits and we saw almost a 100% increase in our membership of non-trads. The Conseil du statut de la femme, the Réseau-Femmes Colombie-Britannique, the Réseau canadien pour la santé des femmes, famafrique, Les Pénélopes from France and even Le Monde helped us to spread the word about our virtual resources. Using also the tools developed by NetFemmes to give non trads news to the French-speaking women of the world, and let more women know about our activities and Web site, our hope is growing that the words of the non-trads will be listened to one day.

Getting the Resources to Go Further

It’s a very encouraging start. We still have to find the resources to go further but, when I make a tour of our Web, what I see makes me anxious to find our way to make it. In our Web, we often feel the lack of resources : so many Web sites are barely updated and developed! In addition, I feel uncomfortable knowing the women who don’t have easy Internet access at home, at school or at work are excluded from their use.

Canada is spending large sums of money on projects to get Canadians online

http://connect.gc.ca/

but there has been no consideration of gender in the elaboration or implementation of its programs. Of course, none are designed to get women online. Did you know that initially, women’s groups were considered "special interest groups" and would not even have been eligible for the VolNet program had it not been for the determined work of Canadian women activists, particularly of Womenspace? In Quebec, the money is spent to help the multimedia industry, youth, developing Web sites for the government itself…

The women’s movement criticizes many government policies, but few Internet related ones, while the lack of resources to get more outcome from the Internet is spread out into women’s groups and women. Nobody will get anything for us, and if we don’t do something about this situation, it won’t get better. Knowing the non-trads are already getting something valuable when we bother to develop useful Internet resources for them, I don’t see how I could let them down. French-speaking women on social welfare, unemployed, lone parents, handicaped, immigrants, lesbians, women of the First Nations, etc., could find useful ways to use ICT too, but haven’t got much chance to give it a try yet. If we don’t bother, who will?