to the peasants! Internet

Peace to the peoples! Land for the peasants! Internet for women!
Olga Goryunova

Publication date: March 7, 2000

On March 3, the National Press Institute hosted a presentation of the printed version of the catalog of network resources “Internet for Women!” .

The presentation took place in an elegant setting. It smelled of perfume and there were a lot of beautiful women. Present in the hall were journalists and representatives of various kinds of organizations - from the Moscow Center for Gender Research and the Economic News Agency to the Moscow State Duma. For two dozen women there were only five men.

Speakers at the press conference were: Galina Grishina - General Director of the Russian Public Organization "East-West: Women's Innovation Projects", Natalya Babich - Program Manager at the above-mentioned Russian Public Organization, Elena Kochkina - Director of the Women's Network Program of the Open Society Institute and Nadezhda Azhgikhina - Co-chairman of the Association of Women Journalists .

It was said that the catalog was the first thematic publication dedicated to “women’s” Internet resources, and resources of a serious, academic type. Speaking about the reasons for addressing the issue of “Woman and the Internet” in Russia, Natalya Babich cited stunning statistics.

For example, if the number of links during a regular search in Yandex for the keyword “woman” is more than 400,000, then when using a family filter that screens out resources with indecent content, this number is almost halved. Moreover, 80% of these resources are hosted on the server of the East-West ROO "Open Women's Line" . @Rus provides information about only 4 women's organizations, while in Russia there are already about 4,000 of them registered, of which about 100 are represented on the Internet. The rate of women's employment in Russian politics (7%) today is comparable only to 1917 - when it was 5% (in Sweden this figure is 50%). And this despite the fact that two-thirds of everything produced in the country is done by women, receiving one tenth of the wages for it.

Catalog "Internet for Women!" prepared by the ROO "East - West: Women's Innovation Projects" . The publication was funded by the Open Society Institute's Women's Network Program .

ROO "East - West" has been functioning since 1992 as a joint project of the German women's foundation "Frauen-Anstiftung" and a group of women of the independent women's movement in Russia. This organization is known for “instilling in Russian women a culture of handling new technologies.” She encouraged women to use e-mail and provided them with access to the Internet. In 1995, the "Women Pioneers the Information Superhighway" project trained participants in the use of communications technology, with the hope of changing the situation in which women were represented on the Internet only as fairground brides.

The second organization that took part in the work on the catalogue, the international Women's Network Program, has been operating in Russia since 1998. Its ideological basis: “Feminism in our understanding is the culture of a civilized society that views women as an equal half of humanity in all respects . ” The program carries out projects aimed at ensuring women's rights, developing a sexist-free culture and politics, developing connections between women's organizations, disseminating knowledge about the gender aspects of social development, etc. One of the program's events in 1999 was dedicated to the problems of trafficking in women and highlighting this problem in the media.

The purpose of creating the catalog is to promote increased access to serious information for women on the Internet. “The catalog is our contribution to changing the stereotypes of public consciousness ,” its creators believe.

Work on the publication lasted five months. The catalog was released in an edition of 1000 copies and will be distributed upon request. Even before the book was published, 540 applications were received from different regions of the country (120 copies were ordered from Novosibirsk alone).

The 300-page catalog contains 911 annotated links to network resources (which include both websites and individual electronic publications), distributed across 14 thematic sections:

• women's movement : "Did you know that last year marked the 90th anniversary of the First Russian Women's Congress"?
• problems of violence : "Did you know that according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in 1994, 14 thousand Russian women were killed by their husbands"?
• gender and women's studies : "Did you know that more than 30 universities in the country offer courses in gender disciplines"?

And also: politics , women's rights - human rights , media , health , education and training , women's creativity, culture and art , grant givers, foundations, charity , religion and sexuality .

The electronic version of the catalog can be searched using various parameters. It is planned that the electronic version will be constantly updated, including with your help, and the next edition will be released on digital CD-ROM media.

All resources presented in the catalogue, regardless of the geographical location of the server, are aimed at Russian women. One of the conditions for considering the inclusion of a resource in the catalog was also its official status - that is, organizations that are abstractly interested in gender issues, but do not have an officially declared department for gender studies, were not included in the catalog.

PS At the press conference, from the audience, among others, the question was asked what “gender” means. Let me explain: gender is an academic term introduced in the humanities in order to be able to neutrally interpret the characteristics of the sexes.