Chahinaz: What rights for women?

The night before last, I watched a show on SBS about a young Algerian woman named Chahinaz, was looking for answers in respect to a woman's role and rights in her own culture and in other cultures internationally. She talked to women from many different religious and educational backgrounds, in many different countries, and questioned the oppression of her own culture in regards to women, and in other cultures, and explored the ways in which oppression was instituted, (including traditional religious belief structures as she experienced it through her own culture,) and also ways in which it could be fought, through changing wide-range perceptions, through the law, and in more militant forms of revolutionary ideology.

I don't know a lot about Algeria, but it was confronting to watch the video footage of her and her friend walking down the street while not wearing a veil. The were heckled and verbally abused with comments like: "Hey, where do you think you're going dressed like that?" To my eyes, they were dressed in very demure, respectable and understated clothing. And when you come from a culture like my own, where almost any type of clothing now appears to be permissable, (although this is a complex issue in its own right,) it's hard to imagine how you'd fare in a more restrictive culture.

She was an intelligent, passionate young woman and I had great admiration for her, as she managed to motivate herself to compile such a slick documentary and have it distributed for viewing in enough nations so that I in Australia was sitting there watching it in my lounge room on a Tuesday night. The highlight for me, were the interviews with the two Irish women Nell McCafferty and Mary Robinson. You can watch all episodes of Chahinaz's journey from this web link, if you have broadband:

http://www.madmundo.tv/en/chahinaz/home-page/

Watching Chahinaz's story came at a time for me where I was being posed questions in my Master's writing subject about the nature and importance of cyber-feminism. The first thing I thought as I watched Chahinaz's documentary, was of how little importance the Internet was in terms of changing real-world woman's rights issues, especially in the face of how few women, (and people in general statistical terms,) have access to the Internet. All of a sudden it seemed so impotent and full of nothing more than fancy ideologies.

But after some thought, I came to the conclusion that cyber-feminism is in fact important and for more than just ideological reasons.

One academic whose work we've been looking at is Donna Haraway,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway

Haraway poses theories on the notion of women as cyborgs in the Internet or computing world, and how this concept frees women of the political constructs that reduce them to bodies. I like some of what Donna Haraway talks of, particularly in ideas relating to cyber-feminism as a tool for political action and the positive concept of utilising machines as tools for liberation. I like her critique of capitalism. Although I am adamant that to be accepted equally in a society, I must do it in my own body, in my own skin, and have that also accepted, as it is a large part of who I am.

There's much I admittedly don't understand about Haraway's work, having only briefly skirted over it. But I do agree with her on the point that women have to keep current with technoscience if they are to be included in the discourse of evolving technology, or the gap will widen leaving women behind through lack of knowledge. We always need to be right in the middle of where the argument takes place, and right at the cusp of where the future is being created.

The other thing that struck me, is the ratio of women to men involved in computer programming science technology. Men far dominate this discipline and I wondered on how important it is that women do not just utilise modern technology for discourse or to break traditional modes of thought, but how we also need to contribute directly at a ground roots level in shaping the modern technological culture of our time. Because it's at this level where where major technological issues are raised in regard to managing software, industrial practice, computer science and policy making. And where there is matters of policy making and industrial practice, there are, or should be, matters of ethical and moral substance. Where are the female Bill Gates? And if you find capitalism as abhorent as I do, where are the female Linus Torvald's? (Creator of Linux.)

If someone has more knowledge than I do on this issue, and can offer me some evidence of women out there who are tackling these issues head on, it would be greatly encouraging to learn of them.