WOMEN' S INNOVATIVE PROJECTS CELEBRATES 10 YEARS

We/My congratulates our colleagues, friends and comrades-in-arms and wish them success and inspirations, as well as continued collaboration.

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Women’s Innovative Projects (full name—“East-West: Women’s Innovative Projects”) and its leaders—Galina Grishina, Natalia Babicha, Alla Denisova, and the Editor-in Chief of their journal Woman, Irina Ryl’nikova, are very well known in Russia. The quarterly journal Woman Plus, now in its eighth year, currently reaches 240 cities in 89 regions in the RF. Its readers include library visitors, social workers, university students and teachers, civil servants, journalists, lawmakers, scientists and scholars. And every week around 500 internet users read the online version.

The information portal “Women and Society” now counts more than 500 subscribers to its weekly electronic news digest, which is visited by around 5000 internet users.

The project “No to Sexism!: Ending Gender Discrimination in the Fight for Human Rights” is aimed at encouraging collaboration between women and human rights NGOs, with the goal of influencing the mass media, which continues to propagate traditional gender stereotypes. The project "A Thesaurus of Gender Terms" is directed at academic institutions with the goal of educating people in the terminology for a wide spectrum of women’s issues. The project “Gender Knowledge on the Internet!” is a directory for gender research published online and aims to bring such material to the attention of scholars and researchers.

1991: How It All Started

1991 was a time in which many women were finding themselves pushed out of the job market and relegated to a lower social status. That summer the Independent Women’s Forum took place in Dubna, where activists from the burgeoning women’s movement gathered with Western feminists. After the forum German participants from the Frauen-Anstiftung Foundation arranged for a group of Russian women to visit various women’s projects in Germany. This trip underscored the need to support Russian women in the new socio-economic situation and to find adequate methods and models for them to earn wages. Several projects were initiated and received support from the German Ministry of Economic Collaboration. One of these projects was Women’s Innovative Foundation of Moscow. This project raised little awareness in the first rush of humanitarian aid to Russia, focusing as it did on collaboration between Russian and German women rather than on the alleviation poverty. Steffi Engert, a consultant for the SNG Foundation Frauen-Anstiftung made invaluable contributions to this process. She was an active participant in left, “Green,” and feminist organizations in Germany and worked as a representative of the Green Party in the European Parliament. But beginning in 1991, she dedicated five years to setting up and developing collaboration between Russian and Western women. Our thanks to Steffi!

1992: 97% of women didn’t know what a computer was. Nobody knew what the web was!

In 1992 an international seminar “Dialogue on the Collaboration of Women in the East and West” was organized in Dubna (Nov 29-Dec 1) under the rubric of the Women’s Innovative Foundation of Moscow. The work of the seminar focused on three themes: women’s projects on socio-economic transformation in Russia, women’s information and communication networks in Europe, and women’s politics in Europe and the possibilities for and perspectives on women’s politics and women’s projects in Russia. Around 60 women from the former USSR took part, and more than a tenth of the participants were from the West. This seminar initiated the establishment of a women’s web-network in Russia, even though few Russian participants understood at the time what this implied: only two of the 62 owned a computer.

1993: Birthday

On May 26 1993, a group of Russian women in Moscow registered a social organization called “Women’s Innovative Foundation: West-East” (ZhIF). (In 1999, the group was renamed a Regional Social Organization “East- West: Women’s Innovative Projects” (ZhIP).) This group partnered with the Frauen-Anstiftung Foundation. One of the basic tasks was to share experience in the realm of education and economic, political and social activity on a national and international level. A second task was to expand the network of women’s organizations spread around different regions of the SNG and connected with each other by email. At this time there were very few women’s organizations in Russia, and none of them worked in information technology. So various courses were put together, including one on information-communication technology. Thanks to Frauen-Anshtiftung, several organizations received modems, and the information web started its work.

1994: A Voice of Her Own: the Journal Woman

In 1994, Iulia Kachalova persuaded everyone of the need to start up a periodical. Since that time the journal has come out almost every year in two languages, Russian and English. A trimesterly journal, Women+ has been published in runs of 500-2000 copies every year, depending on available funding. In addition to the foundational funding it received from Frauen-Anstiftung, the publication has also received financial support from the Heinrich Bellia Foundation, the Open Society Insitute (the Soros Foundation), the EU, the Moscow Administration, the Canadian Embassy, the USA Agency for International Development and twice from the Worldwide Women’s Fund. In 1997, the socio-educational journal Woman+ was registered as an official organ of the media. All the contents of the journal from 1996 on is available online (in Russian and English) and is accessible to all.

1994-1996: Widening the Network: Success for the Women’s Web

At the 1995 conference “Women’s Information-Communication Networks and Organizations: Experience and Perspectives” (Jan 30-31), a report was made summarizing ZhIP’s work in web development over the past two years. This conference brought together not only members of the Russian network of women’s organizations, but also members of European women’s networks (from England, Belgium and Italy). Conference participants noted four areas in which the web assisted their work:

1. Overcoming a sense of isolation;

2. Changing people by exposing them to what is going on in the world around them; Opening up people to new ideas, acceptance of different ways of life;

3. Giving women’s organization more authority through their access to and use of new information-communication technologies;

4. Capitalizing on all communication means possible (teleconferences, electronic postings, databases) to achieve our goals.

Also, ideas for new projects had emerged over these two years:

. “Information as an Instrument for Change”: ZhIF worked on this project with GREW (Belgium) and the St Petersburg Center for Gender Research. The project aimed to raise the qualification of representatives of the independent press “Timely Thoughts on Women’s Themes,” published as an anthology, From Original Sin to High Technology.

. “The Transfer of Democracy in Russia: Supporting and Maintaining Women’s Rights in Russia”: This was a collaborative project with AIDoS (Italy) and KEGME (Greece), aimed at establishing a network of resource centers with special libraries on women’s rights.

. “Women’s Electronic Business Incubators”: An internet consulting project for women’s business incubators, with participants from England, Germany, Russia and Sweden.

. “Political Education for Women on the Web”: A project to provide a selection of services to expand possibilities for women, with participants from Germany, Italy and Russia.

. “Constructing a Resource Center for Women’s Organizations in Russia”: A project to establish information resource centers for women, with participants from Italy and Russia.

1996-2002

By 1996, the internet had already become a virtual reality (90,000 websites), accessed by universities, scholarly and educational centers, libraries, museums, exhibitions, etc. But most of the information was in English. Just about the only Russian women you could find on the web were Russian brides . . . Something had to be done to rectify the situation!

On November 20, 1996 the website “Open Women Line” (http://www.owl.ru) was set up. Out of 250 Russian websites this was the first—and for several years remained the only—website focused on women and women’s issues.

Three years went by, and the OWL website had already grown so much that it had to be reconfigured as the thematic portal “Women and Society.” The site kept all its old content and added new sections, highlighted all the most important links on the homepage, set up a chat page, and added other useful features. The site also chose four “news bands”: “News on the Women’s Movement in Russia,” “News on the International Women’s Movement,” “Announcements,” and “Events in Civil Society.” An “Open Page” was also added, on which visitors to the site could write about what they are doing, what they think, and how they see the world around them. Modernizing the site not only made it easier for the ever- growing number of visitors to access information, but it also attracted new visitors. After the launch of the “Women and Society” portal, the number of references to it in the press rose sharply.

The Catalogue Internet for Women!

The internet in Russia has fought for its popularity and has tended to reflect all the usual stereotypes that plague the public consciousness, not least gender stereotypes. What could one find for or about women on the net? Pornography, of course, but also information on magazines, cooking, cosmetics, fashion, dating services . . . Women’s interests are generally relegated in these catalogues to “entertainment” or “family.” But over the last few years more and more sites dedicated to women’s issues have been popping up; still, for some reason, they have not made their way into catalogues or search engines. ZhIP resolved to rectify this situation. With the support of the Women’s Web Program Institute “Open Society” (Soros Foundation), a catalogue of information resources, Internet for Women! was published. In addition to the print publication, an online version was published, which can be found at http://iw.owl.ra. Most of the information touches on the situation of women, their rights, the activities and achievements of Russian and foreign women’s organizations, politics, women’s and gender research, the problem of rape. The editors (Natalia Babich, Galina Grishina and Alla Denisova) wrote a preface to the catologue, and this text was widely published on the internet. Articles on the catalogue also appeared in the central press.

The Glossary of Gender Terminology

With the assistance of the Canadian Foundation for the Support of Russian Women, ZhIP also has taken on a new project with the goal of familiarizing Russians with ideas accepted worldwide on gender equality. After two years of work, 49 authors from Russian and neighboring countries, and 378 terms, the encyclopedic Glossary of Gender Terminology appears in 945 libraries in all territories of Russia, as well as in many noncommercial organizations. The glossary was published in two versions—print and electronic. The electronic version of the glossary can be found at http://www.owl.ru/gender, and is accessible to everyone. The launch of the publication (April 14, 2002) drew the attention of many press agencies, including major television stations (NTV and Kultura), radio, print and electronic publications.

And to follow up the work on the glossary, work is beginning on the project “The Language of Enmity.”

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