Awareness

It seemed important to take a critical approach to technology, to assess where it was a benefit and how we might work to make it more able to create the kind of life-style and work environment that we wanted for our lives. We wanted to look at the ways in which it was a destructive force and outline strategies that could be used to counteract this.

The planning group was feminist in the sense that it recognized that there were hidden barriers that prevented women from gaining access to knowledge concerning new technology. Access to information is one of the keys to more equal access to better jobs, to training and re-training and action for a safer work environment. These workshops were to be a chance to gain an understanding of the complexity of work with the new technology and an opportunity to work together to do something about it.

Having women from several areas that are currently being revolutionized by the technology was a catalyst to awareness. Bank tellers, clerical workers, teachers, counsellors, etc. could begin to explain what was happening in different professions.

Learning Environment

We wanted the participants to have a voice - a voice that could be informed by the speakers and a voice that could mingle with the speakers and experts. We did some simple things to encourage that voice: a chance to have coffee before small work groups and have the formal atmosphere broken up. Our group of participants was small enough that we could allow choice of small groups on the basis of having heard the speaker. The presenters could devote full attention to the participants because there was a "facilitator" who took notes, arranged the seating and made sure that the audio-visual equipment was in place. Reports were made back to the plenary session.

The Search for Participants

We wanted to aim our sessions at women in front-line leadership roles such as shop stewards, supervisors and middle management. We also added the following to the list: teachers of high school and community college students, clerical workers, bank tellers and women in the home who might be facing the issue of "homework".

Women who work at such levels do not have time during the work week for workshops. They also are likely to have several jobs like child rearing and housekeeping as well as their work outside the home. Taking a full weekend off would pose problems. For those reasons workshops were held on several consecutive Saturdays. We offered daycare, but had no requests for it.

Resource People

Finding resource people was a pleasant task. We attempted to find people who would speak not so much as experts but as people who were working with the new technology or had been learning about it from people who were working with it.

We hoped to reach people who could be sources of information from business, industry, the labor movement and all levels of the educational institutions who were dealing with education and training of women to work with the new technology. Within this larger area we began to focus on the labor movement and educational institutions. This is not to say that we did not have representation from business and industry but as we moved into the issues we began to realize that once we established a "critical" stance, representatives of business and industry were less able to participate at this level.