No one is arguing that cyberspace is just a boy's playground anymore. Recent surveys show that women make up 43 percent of Net users. But now that women have staked their claim in the technology world, the question rising in the minds of activists, feminists, and educators, is, "What now?" Beginning with last weekend's Women, Work, and Computerization, a series of women's conferences are leaving boosterism behind to address more serious issues of empowerment, employment, and education.
"Now that we've gotten this far, what about creeping sexism, the pushing down from above, keeping ahold of what we've got?" asks Sandy Stone, gender and Internet theorist. "We're talking about coalition building, getting down in the trenches before it all evaporates."
Stone debated issues of the body in cyberspace at the Women, Work, and Computerization conference in Bonn, which drew more than 200 primarily European academics for theory-heavy discussions of gender and technology, education, and democracy. This weekend, she's doing the same at the Women and the Art of Multimedia conference in Washington, DC.
Women and the Art of Multimedia begins Thursday night; up to 200 women are expected for a discussion of women's themes, rights, and access to multimedia production and design. Speakers, ranging from young zine creators to NOW organizers to older multimedia executives, will cover "meat and potatoes" topics for wired creatives, including Women's Experiences in New Media, Financing: Who Pays?, and Dominance and Demographics.
"A lot of time there's a perception that women are technophobic," says Susan Fisher Sterling, co-coordinator of the WAM conference. "But a lot of women are moving towards new media because it's not colonized like traditional art. There's room for innovation."
While WAM addresses the artistic side of the technology industry, next week's annual Women and Technology conference, in Santa Clara, California, will be strictly business.
WITI recently conducted a survey that discovered that, while women now make up close to 50 percent of those entering the science and technology industry, they are still experiencing glass ceilings at the middle-management level, as well as suffering an "old boys' club" mentality. The goal of the conference, then, is to educate women to overcome those hurdles - which means teaching self-promotion and competence, as well as offering one-on-one mentoring sessions for burgeoning female technology workers. In keeping with the idea of role models, the 2,500 attendees will listen to and mingle with industry bigwigs like Carol Bartz, CEO of AutoDesk, and Patty Stonesifer, DreamWorks adviser and former Microsoft senior VP.
"People are feeling that trade-show type conferences are too impersonal, and focus only on one angle," explains Anna van Raaphorst Johnson of WITI. "WITI tries to wrap all that together, so that people will make quality contacts, job search in a comfortable situation. And [it] isn't so huge that people can't sit together and talk."
There are many other women-related technology gatherings this year for others who wish to sit down and talk. The Webgrrls convention and the Spiderwoman Summit are also noteworthy. As Sterling explains, these small, specialized conferences are not only the best way for creative women in the technology fields to network, but to work toward greater recognition of women's issues.
"The idea is that there's a different message that can be offered, and you don't want those messages to be shut out," says Sterling. "For a long time the only people listening to you are people like you. Then it eventually spreads to greater parlance."
