ICT and Women's Activism in Asia - notes
Hello.
I'm Machiko Tomomasa, Coordinator of Asia Japan Resource Center in Japan. Asia Japan Resource Center was established April 1995 inheriting the 20 years of experience in women's activism implemented under Asian Women's Association.
With membership over 900 within and outside of Japan, we work towards realizing our vision of alternative future built upon the global views of women, ecology, Asia (of the Southern world), and grass-root group.
Today I'd like to talk about fem-net and vaww-net.
For women like us at the grass root level in Japan, having been able to obtain draft Platform of Action from APC networks before the Beijing conference, was a land mark event. This enabled us Japanese women to translate the draft Platform into our language and make our voices heard as input to the process. Such things (obtaining draft beforehand) were never possible in the past.
From this experience, after the Beijing Conference, I begun to think that we should have an electronic network for Japan's women movements. But, speaking with several activists, I realized that most women activists could not use computers very well or didn't even have one.
Luckily, the people who helped us obtain the draft Platform were in the process of building an electronic network dedicated to promoting citizens movements. I was able to get support from them to host computer training course and also to prepare for fem-net.
Fem-net currently has over 90 subscribers. Japanese women abroad has also subscribed from Netherlands, United States, etc. After one year in operation, we are now planning to renew the framework to accommodate the needs so far identified.
I myself learned about mailing lists and electronic conferences through the process of managing fem-net, and I'm fostering fem-net with the growing community of its members.
The other experience is with vaww-net.
November last year, we organized together with ASCENT, an international conference titled "Violence against women in war and conflict situation" the acronym vaww is taken from the title.
50 female experts gathered for this conference, each presenting the cases from their individual situation and discussed possible responses to such cases, which were subsequently complied into "Tokyo Declaration." The event was meaningful that we were able to bring out the cases from Asia.
It was decided at the conference that we should organize ourselves into a network acting on issues concerning violence against women in war and conflict situation. So we started a mailing list to exchange our information as well as our views. The mailing list has been quite instrumental in facilitating our activities. It is also linked to APC network's conference named "women vaw" which is accessed by many women around the globe.
In order to take the 21st century into the hands of women, we will need to develop our alternative vision, and alternative lifestyle. Economic globalization must be countered by globalizing the ideals of co-existence and solidarity among women.
The question posed here is how do we create a global network of women's grassroots movements, especially in Asia?
Here, I think the women's resource centers can and will have a huge role to play. Developing an electronic network that can be shared with many grassroots women, as an effective tool for networking in realizing our common goal. My hope is that this exchange here today will be the starting point of such activity.
Thank you.
Machiko Tomomasa
Coordinator of Asia Japan Resource Center
Japan
AWORC search demo -- Index information
Unique ID : jcanetaworc980721a_en Subject : Physical type : note Language : en Title : Building electronic network of activist women in Asia and in Japan - experience of fem-net and vaww-net Author, organization : Machiko TOMOMASA, Asia-Japan Women's Resource Center Date of publication : 1998.04.22 Geographical coverage : Japan, Asia Keyword : VAW, VAWW, ICT, Online location : http://www.jca.ax.apc.org/aworc/ict/notes/ajwrc9807en.html