Data Banks: Access to Information on Women

Moderator:
Aisla Thomson, Program
Coordinator, CRIAW

Panelists:
Nita Cooke, Representative
of BerCo Information Research Ltd.

Sheila Bertram, Assistant Professor,
Faculty of Library Science,
University of Alberta

Deborah Brecher, Coordinator,
National Women's MaiJing List

Jill Lippitt, National Women's
Mailing List

Panelists discussed the advantages of technology in areas such as indexing and building bibliographies. The technology can be seen as a tool to empower women through rapid diffusion of information and other uses, such as the National Women's Mailing List, which was discussed at length. The technology enables us to record our own history and culture, if we choose to use and develop it according to our needs and interests. This means decentralizing information to make it available to large numbers of women; checking the system so that individual and collective rights are respected; and ensuring that machines and programs are designed to serve the public, and not vice versa. Several of the problems raised were related to copyright, costs, privacy of research, and censorship.

Nita Cooke and Sheila Bertram reported their preliminary finding for a study which was undertaken to explore the ways and means available for the compilation of a computerized bibliographic retrieval system containing information on, or of interest to women. This study was jointly commissioned by CRIAW/ICRAF and the Alberta Women's Bureau. They found that no specific bibliographic data base on women is available to date. They suggested that anyone involved in creating such a data base would have to be aware of, keep up with, form networking contacts, etc., with all of the varied activities concerned with access to information about women, if only to avoid unnecessary duplication or missing of opportunities for sharing and cooperation.

Action:

• Individuals and organizations should seek information on the National Women's Mailing List, and possibly join. Pressure should be exerted, through funding sources, to have women's journals indexed.

Communications Technology in Business and Industry

Moderator:
Dorothy Morris, Director,
CCLOW; P.E.I.

Panelists:
Joan Newman Kuyek, Community
Legal Worker, Sudbury Community
Legal Clinic

Carol Hughes, Manager of Equipment
and Software Planning, Air
Canada

Nancy Sunderland, Consultant,
Telemet

Computerized corporate communication networks, within and between enterprises, contribute to increased productivity, improved service and decreased cost. Automation cannot eliminate bureaucracy, but it does free workers from boring and repetitive tasks.

Issues raised were:

• The need for massive retraining of workers.

• Machines ill-suited to the operators.

• Security of information,

• Computer piracy.

• The need to ensure that the users, not the programmers, control the information.

• Dependence on large-scale systems, and the resulting unemployment problem.

• Consciousness raising for managers, aimed at a global approach to the introduction of microtechnology.

Action:

• Women must take responsibility for' their own education in the context of the new technologies.

Informatics

Workshop Leader:
Irish Fitzpatrick Martin, University
of Montreal

Information is increasingly mediated (i.e., processed, stored and communicated) by technological devices. This "info mediation" (term coined by the author) of all societal activities impacts upon women in every working area: housework, clerical work, medicine, teaching, sales and services, and factory work.

Referring to her study, "Women and Inform mediation: The Six Interfaces of Eve" (Gamma, Information Society Programmed), Iris Fitzpatrick Martin examined the present situation of Canadian women, and the probable effects of info mediation on each occupational category.