Women'sNet is a networking support programme designed to enable South African women to use the internet to find the people, issues, resources and tools needed for women's social action.

Issues

Some of the issues it has focused on include

HIV/AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...

violence against women Violence against women (VAW), also known as gender-based violence (GBV) or sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), violent, violence primarily committed by Man, men or boys against woman, women or girls. Such violence is often considered hat ...

, Gender in Parliament, Health, Women and

Information and communication technologies Information and communications technology (ICT) is an extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals) and compute ...

(ICTs), Women and Enterprise, and Women and Elections.

Resources

The Women'sNet site offers links to useful websites, a newsletter (launched in April 2006), links to relevant issues, and a directory of organisations.

History

In 1998, Women'sNet was established as a project of the Commission of Gender Equality and

SANGONeT SANGONeT is a South African organisation, whose acronym stands for The Southern African NGO Network. It is a civil society organisation with a focus on ICT, which was founded in 1987, and has a history closely linked to the social and political c ...

. In the following year, the first Women'sNet webpages went live, focusing on women and human rights issues in South Africa. It also created the first online space for South African women to reflect and strategise in the lead up to the 1999 national elections. In 1999 too, the African Sisters online workshop was held. Women'sNet collaborated with

FEMNET FEMNET, also called the African Women's Development and Communication Network, is an organization established in 1984 to promote women's development in Africa. FEMNET helps non-government organizations share information and approaches on women's ...

to create an online platform for joining regional processes in the lead-up to the

Beijing+5 Beijing, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's most populous national capital city as well as China's second largest city by urban area after Shanghai. It is lo ...

conference. 2001 saw the creation of the first women-run internet cafe for civil society organisations at the World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia and related Intolerances, among other activities. In 2000, Women'sNet launched a project to combine radio and audio production with women's

NGO A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

s efforts, to promote a

women's empowerment Women's empowerment (or female empowerment) may be defined in several method, including accepting women's viewpoints, making an effort to seek them and raising the status of women through education, awareness, literacy, equal status in society, ...

agenda. It also won the

Highway Africa A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It includes not just major roads, but also other public roads and rights of way. In the United States, it is also used as an equivalent term to controlled-access highway, or ...

ward for Innovative Use of the New Media. Other landmarks include SANGONeT Board's confirming Women'sNet's independent status (April 2002), its joining of the international ICT4D network the

Association for Progressive Communications The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is an international network of organizations that was founded in 1990 to provide communication infrastructure, including Internet-based applications, to groups and individuals who work for peace ...

, being officially registered as a non-governmental organisation (January 2003), being a core partner in the first Africa-wide Women and Electronic Networking Training in

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

(2003), launching an on-line up-datable database of South African organisations providing services targeted at girls (March 2003). In 2004, it convened a stake-holders meet to consult South African women's NGOs on their information and technology needs; launched the GenderStats website, launching Girls'Net, hosting the first African workshop on

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

( or FLOSS) and implementing the

Recording Women's Voices A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, re ...

project.

Training, technology planning

Over the past two years (2005 and 2006), Women'sNet has also co-trained South African women to participate in the global cyber-dialogues on the Beijing+10 review process, and women's

s on technology planning and FLOSS. Girl'sNet runs a visual literacy training project with young girls in the

Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape ( ; ) is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, and its largest city is Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth). Due to its climate and nineteenth-century towns, it is a common location for tourists. It is also kno ...

, and has held a photo exhibition in August 2005. Women'sNet also launched the (s)hebytes project and website as a space "where women and men talk about gender and women's empowerment". It launched digital story telling workshops "to train women and girls in story telling -- combining images, audio and text into a short documentary about their lives".

External links

Women'sNet, South AfricaGenderStats
{{DEFAULTSORT:Women'snet Women in computing Information technology organisations based in South Africa Women in South Africa