4.3.10 Woman-Supportive Uses of High Technologies in Education:

During the course of our research, many people expressed concern about the degree to which people are being asked to adjust to changes in technology. Training and education which could be a way to put technological advances to the service of human needs, far too frequently is having exactly the opposite effect.

Clearly, high technologies are here to stay. Clearly, also, they have the potential to make a major contribution to the kind of transformative education our interviewee's described. In our research, we attempted to identify situations where the uses of advanced technologies are being explicitly shaped to needs of women. One area where this is happening in exciting and important ways is in the field of distance education.

Athabasca University, for example, provides both credit and non- credit courses to students across Canada, although most are in Alberta, where the University itself is based. Sixty-two percent of all students are women and 68% of native students are women. Many different distance methods of teaching are used in the various courses. One particular program is aimed at women with their R.N. who want to take an undergraduate degree in nursing. Most of the women live in rural areas of Alberta. The University Women's Outreach Program is funded through Secretary of State. Its focus is also rural women. The program provides a Speakers Bureau to the different areas served, audio-tapes for workshops and printed material.

Generally, women's course completion rates tend to be higher than those of men. Students say that the Women's Studies courses fill in the gaps they've found in other courses. Many women report that they do not feel isolated, that they have made many personal changes and developed personally because of the courses they've taken through Athabasca.

5.0 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS: BREAKING THE CIRCLE

"We've got to break the circle. . . make it into a spiral. . ."

(interviewee)

In the seventeen years since the publication of the Royal Commission Report on the Status of Women, there have been marginal changes in women's social and economic position in Canada. However, the major issues remain (54). Although some barriers have become lower - through, for example, the inclusion of women in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, others appear to be, at best, unchanged. One place where there has been little discernible progress is that of policy and programs related to adult education and training. Although training and education levels have been identified as the most significant correlative factor with respect to high quality, continuing employment, and even though women's labour force participation rates continue to increase, resources specifically allocated to training and education for women appear to be decreasing. Most training programs for women continue to direct them to segregated areas of relatively low-paying, insecure jobs within a narrow range of occupations. For women who experience special problems in finding sources of high quality work such as the disabled, those lacking basic education, or those whose first language is not English or French, the problem is particularly serious. Our research has indicated that the number of people finding themselves to be specially disadvantaged within the labour market is actually increasing, while the number of jobs available to them is diminishing.