THE NEW TECHNOLOGY A MODEL FOR RAISING WOMEN'S AWARENESS

BY MARIANNE WILLIAMS

The following is an article describing the planning for and results of the conference Women in the 80's: Work, Technology and Change which took place at O.I.S.E. in April, 1982. This article has been reduced from a much longer one, written by Marianne Williams, which is available at the national CCLOW office.

Six CCLOW members, with an interest in finding out more about the new technology met in the winter of 1981. We realized that the best way to to educate ourselves was through helping others to learn.

When the group first met, it decided that its first step was to get a broad base of connections in the community with labor, educational organizations, service agencies and feminist groups. It was with this group that the issues were barnstormed so that the final topics emerged.

This is the list:

1. Job Elimination
2. Training and Re-training
3. Health and Safety
4. Human Issues: Impact on the Individual and Society
5. Technology for Human Needs
6. The Computer as a Political Tool

The working group narrowed to six people and the number of workshops that we were able to do narrowed down to three. We set our objectives as a working group:

1. to educate ourselves by finding more in-depth information about the new technology
   
   
2. to create an opportunity to collect data on: ( i ) areas of concern for research ( i i ) the creation of educational materials
   
   
3. prepare for lobbying
   
   
4. prepare for the national conference cosponsored by CCLOW, CRIAW. CFUW and NAC.

We asked ourselves four basic questions which became the center for the rest of our planning:

1. What kind of awareness did we want to raise?
2. What kind of learning environment and interaction did we want to create?
3. Where would we search for our participants?
4. Who should our resource people be and what kind of information
   did we want them to provide?