New Learning Technologies: Promises and Prospects for Women

Leslie noted that universal access to basic network services is a key preoccupation of public policy makers. An Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC) was set up by the federal government to examine and report on issues of access. Though social issues such as equity, democratic participation and social justice were not seriously considered by the Council, the federal government has made a commitment to ensuring universal access, including access with respect to gender.

Leslie suggested that access to telephone service be used as a comparison for access to network service, in that a vital public sphere is maintained, the tradition of communication as a public good is continued, and that universal access is considered an essential human right. Inequities in access to the Information Highway have been found based on education, class, gender, visible minority status, ability, language, geography, etc. But information on access and computer ownership is rarely analyzed by gender.

There is very little social facilitation for women's and girls' approach to computers or the information highway. Ensuring women's access to the Internet means ensuring physical accessibility (easily available terminals and Internet connections) and designing technologies that are sensitive to women's knowledge and experiences. For example, security and privacy would have to be ensured given that many women's groups deal with issues of a sensitive nature.

Questions arise about how increasing technologization affects women's lives: Are women losing jobs in the service sectors (banks, libraries)? Are more women forced to work at home with no benefits, no employment standards and little social interaction? Will information technology jobs become pink collar ghettoes? Leslie has noticed a trend in advertising, the media and some commercial applications towards the domestication of technology. She compares this trend to the introduction of the television in the post- war era as a "window onto the world," where the technology becomes the new "family hearth."

Leslie's paper ended with several recommendations and questions for further discussion that grew largely out of a workshop on Universal Access to Essential Network Services held at the University of Toronto in February of 1997. The workshop included representatives from government, business, labour, academia and public interest groups including women's groups. The questions/recommendations, included in the appendix to this report, address how universal access and appropriate content could be achieved and secured through various regulatory measures.

The Quality of the Learning Experience
A panel discussion on the Quality of the Learning Experience followed the delivery of Leslie's paper. Presenters provided viewpoints from three perspectives: the learner (Miriam Ticoll), the educator (Mavis Bird) and the private sector (Vasso Vahlas).

The Learner Miriam Ticoll presented her experience of having enrolled in and completed a course about the Internet entirely on the Internet. Though there was a "class" and an instructor, there were no organized face to face meetings between any of these people at any time during the course.

This produced a sense of "disembodiment," a suspension of the usual social ways of attaching meaning and assumptions to a person's appearance, age and (because names are not necessarily gender-specific) gender. This "invisibility" opened up possibilities of equal participation through the absence of judgement based on appearance, age, ability, sexual orientation and (in some cases) gender.