Lydia Alpízar Durán was a
founder
of ELIJE, a youth
organization for women’s rights in
Mexico, and is now AWID's Feminist Organizational Development Program
Coordinator. I met her at the 2002 Women’s Global Leadership Institute
(organised by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership), and have since
held her as one of the most inspiring feminist friend I have made.
Although our meetings are infrequent due to our geographical locations
(her in Mexico and Costa Rica, me in Malaysia), we had many
conversations through internet chats about countless topics. I have
explored much in terms of feminist activism through these dialogues,
and learnt much from Lydia's experiences in the women's movement.
Finding out that she was at the Beijing +10 process at the 49th Session
of the Commission on the Status of Women, I caught up with her thoughts
on the relationship between ICTs and movement building in women’s human
rights.
Jac: Do you think that there’s any
relevance in terms of ICTs and movement building?
Lydia: Ya, I think that somehow, access to information and
communications technologies is one of glue that helps us put together
the movement at the global level, and at different levels. Because it
allows exchange of information, to understand each other’s issues, to
build solidarity, and to have a sense that we are part of a movement
that goes beyond the local work or the national we do. So I think ICTs
have always been – even when we didn’t have as advanced technology –
some of the most important part of movement building, because it is a
very important tool for doing it.
Jac: But at the moment, in terms of
ICT policy at the
international level, it barely recognises women’s perspectives. Trying
to put gender into the agenda or language of ICTs as a political issue
has been quite lacking, and there has been not much engagement from
local women’s movement. The civil society movement that is taking up
this issue is also not really looking at gender. Do you think there is
a need for women’s movements to actually look at ICTs as a political
issue?
Lydia: I think so because if we assume that it’s a very
important tool for us for mobilising and building… But I think
generally, in society, ICTs have become very relevant, because so many
things go to the web. Like the internet for example, all of the
information that is communicated to women, and other kinds of ICTs as
well. I think, as with other issues, we really need to have a strong
presence there.
As any tool, they can be really good or really bad. We
need to be sure that ICTs are responsive to women and they can serve us
for empowerment and movement [building] and for advancing women’s human
rights. Otherwise they can be used as a way, somehow, like mainstream
media for example, where images portrayed continue to be
discriminatory, where regulations sometimes prevent women from
accessing technology, particularly groups that are more excluded or
marginalised. I’m talking for example of really poor women, or
indigenous women who don’t have that kind of access. So I think the way
the policies on ICTs are developed could be good for us. But as we know
with everything else, if we are not there, they are probably not going
to be very useful in our struggle.
Jac: Why do you think that women’s
movement are quite resistant in engaging so far?
Lydia: Because I think technology has been an issue
that has
been portrayed traditionally in this patriarchal society as a male
arena. So sometimes people kind of fear technology because they feel
they cannot handle it, or they don’t have the capacity to do it; and
I’m not saying that most women are like that, because I think we have
changed a lot of the culture and I think there is more and more women
who are empowered and are really using technologies to mobilise.
But
somewhere in this unconscious, I think we still have some kind of
resistance to technology. I see that increasingly, there are more women
accessing them and doing philosophic development around technology and
science and all of that. But still, it’s quite a male dominated field.
They somehow define these courses around their policies
[andperspectives]. So, I think there is resistance because I think
maybe we don’t see it as a traditional women’s issue.
Jac: Yes…Strangely in this entire
Beijing + 10 process,
Section J [of the Beijing Platform for Action], which deals with media
and communications, has been dropped out. It has been more or less
completely invisible in the entire process.
Lydia: It has always been a struggle. I think it has something
to do with what we were talking about yesterday, the movement is too
fragmented, and somehow we have lacked a more integrated approach. If
you think for example, violence against women, ICTs are key. Or if you
think about economic empowerment, ICTs are key.
So I don’t think that
women don’t have it on their agenda, but they don’t see it as a very
specific issue sometimes. We kind of rely on women journalist or
women working on ICTs to put it on the agenda. I think in that
regard, we are kind of victims of the fragmentation of the movement. If
some people that are working on the issue don’t put it on the agenda,
then other people wont. And also there is this funny thing that only
people who are working on the issue can put it on the agenda, so it’s
both ways. I think it’s a big strategic mistake we are doing, because
at the end what we should be doing is reinforcing each other’s issues
and each other’s agendas because they compliment each other, or they
can hinder each other too. So I think it has to do with those things,
no?
Jac: Do you have any suggestion for
future strategies?
Where do you think advocates on ICTs and advocates various other
issues, can or should go from here?
Lydia: I don’t know, I think that the movement still needs to
get a lot of capacity building around ICTs. Like for example, putting
information on the website, accessing computers, how do you actually
build website, how do you upload documents… Right now it is a very
useful tool for dissemination of information and sharing experiences,
and I see that many groups are not very good at communicating and using
those tools.
I see people working on ICTs as doing several things. One
is helping women to interlink, how ICTs relate to the different
issues they are working on. How do you open dialogue
with women working on economic empowerment, with women working on
political participation and so on. At the same time, how do you work in
capacity building with those groups. So it is an exchange, and I think
it’s a very strategic partnership.
I guess somehow the goal may be that
ICT specific groups won’t be needed in the future because everybody
will have them so integrated that they won’t need to have them. But
meanwhile, I think it is very important that ICT specific groups are
here.
Jac: Strategic spaces for dialogue?
Lydia: Yes. I think it’s an issue that has to do not only with
ICTs, but new technologies generally. Reproductive technologies,
nano-technologies, surveillance technologies that are completely about
this, because women’s bodies are the centre of so much control and
dispute. And it’s clear here in the UN that the issue around
sexuality and women’s capacity to control our bodies, our reproductive
capacities and so on, are the ones that stuck the process!
We need to draw all issues related to that agenda, and build
the links with new technologies also… reproductive, surveillance,
nano-technologies and all that, because they’re going to have a
big impact on women and I don’t think we put enough attention to
that.
It’s kind of a forward looking issue. We don’t see their urgency
now, probably like how we weren’t seeing the urgency of why women need
to have access to ultra-sound test in India twenty years ago. And now
we are so clear that access to this new technology in a society that
has all
those discriminatory behaviours is important – I’m using India, but we
can use other places as well.
Jac: It’s difficult though because
ICTs is always such a
‘privileged’ discourse to enter into. Only places that have access,
where people are connected and so on, who can even think about
technologies; [these] are places that are privileged to a certain
extent, or individuals who are positioned in privileged locations. And
that makes it very difficult to have a dialogue. Because when you bring
the issue on the table, and then for example, a grassroots or community
based organisation who is working on issues of poverty for women will
say, “hey, we don’t even have food, we don’t even have housing, why are
you talking to us about communications technologies?” That makes it
very difficult to forge that connection, that whether we are connected
[to new ICTs] or not, it still affects us, somehow.
Lydia: Ya, I mean the lack of connection into the globalised
system of information increases people’s exclusion and discrimination.
The way that society’s developed, that’s working right now,
access to ICTs is one of the ways in which people are being excluded or
marginalised. But also, we need see ICTs as providing
very traditional forms of communication as well; because I think we
have gone too [much] into the internet, and sometimes I think we’re not
being as easy to understand anymore.
One really groundbreaking work
that was done in the 80’s mostly; the road to Beijing was done by the
International Women’s Tribune Centre, and they used to produce all
those really amazing, very simple materials. I remember when I started
doing work in the Beijing process in ‘93 with young women, I used to
use those materials, printed materials that we could photocopy very
easily, that were easy to understand, that you could get access to.
Even though society is getting more and more into the internet, to
PDF
and so on, I think we should not forget that there are a lot of people
who are not accessing internet, particularly women. I would think
that in terms of talking on those issues with discriminated communities
or really marginalised groups, you have to somehow go step by step; and
you cannot jump into big communication and
information technologies but give access to other forms of
communication and information that can build their capacity.
For
example, people working on trade. I see programmes that are being used
in Mexico right now where farmers have access to computers and they can
access all those information about how market their products or things
like that. There is a use that they can make, but in order for them
to have that, they need to be literate and have all these sorts of
skills as well. So it’s tricky, it’s really tricky. Whether you give
access or popularise it, it’s a big issue. Even though we can broaden
access, we might still somehow contribute to further exclusion.
Jac: Yes, it’s a complex issue. Thanks
very much for sharing
your thoughts. It’s at least clear that there are a lot of dialogues to
be had, and careful examination of these differences when thinking
about ICTs and gender. But hopefully this can be the one of the many
small steps in making these dialogues happen.
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