Background

What is happening to women in the current technological revolution? Are they benefiting from progress, or are they victimized by it? Are female workers moving toward new jobs, or are their present qualifications becoming useless? What is the role of women in decision-making processes at various levels, local as well as international?

These issues were puzzling for some in the summer of '81. Their concern led to a first large meeting, held on September 27, 1981, at the New court House of St. Lawrence College in Kingston. Sponsored by three national organizations (the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women [CRIAW], the Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women [CCLOW], and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women [NAC]), the meeting brought together about 20 women from Ontario, all active feminists. They agreed that a conference was desirable and that it should:

• Promote a greater knowledge of micro technology and related problems.

• Encourage participants to define a personal plan of action, including the expression of their claims.

• Serve as a meeting point for the exchange of ideas and knowledge.

• Inform of the advantages of micro technology, particularly in the workplace.

A steering committee was immediately set up. In the course of the following months, its members would design the conference, obtain necessary funding, identify resource persons, and hire administrative staff; then, through weekly meetings and hundreds of telephone conversations, discover the hidden charms of working as a team.

Among the major concerns were:

• To elaborate a conference program to meet the needs of beginners, as well as those of women already well informed.

• To identify women as workshop leaders in all sectors.

• To ensure that Canadian women from all provinces could register and be served in their own official language.

• To reach a large variety of interest groups.

Conference Objectives

A second meeting was held in February 1982, at Carleton University in Ottawa, at which, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario were represented. Three objectives were defined:

"The first objective is to simplify technological language and explain the workings of microcomputers and word processing equipment to women. The computer industry has developed a jargon which can inhibit the layperson, and which has contributed to an aura of mystification surrounding the whole computer field. And although women are, and will be using technological equipment in the workplace as well as in the home, they have not been given the opportunity to understand the functioning and logic behind these machines.