GETTING AROUND ONLINE: HOW, WHERE, WHY?

by Elisabeth Binder

Judith Broadhurst, THE WOMAN'S GUIDE TO ONLINE SERVICES. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995. 418p. pap., $19.95, ISBN 0-07-024168-6.

Laurel Gilbert, Crystal Kile, SURFERGRRRLS: LOOK, ETHEL! AN INTERNET GUIDE FOR US! Seattle, Seal Press, 1996. 243p. pap., $15.00, ISBN 1-878067-79-6.

Joan Korenman, INTERNET RESOURCES ON WOMEN: USING ELECTRONIC MEDIA IN CURRICULUM TRANSFORMATION. Baltimore: National Center for Curriculum Transformation Resources on Women, Towson University, 1997. 111p. $20.00, ISBN 1-885303-08-4 (shipping: $4 first copy, $1 each additional).

Shana Penn, THE WOMEN'S GUIDE TO THE WIRED WORLD: A USER- FRIENDLY HANDBOOK AND RESOURCE DIRECTORY. New York: The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1997. 307p. index. pap., $16.95, ISBN 1-55861-167-3.

Rye Senjen, Jane Guthrey, THE INTERNET FOR WOMEN. North Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1996. 285p. pap., $16.95, ISBN 1-875559-52-3.

Against better judgment, cultural pessimists have been predicting the death of McLuhan's "Gutenberg galaxy" for the past few years. On the contrary, in the wake of the first personal computers and access to electronic communication and information media, the death of the book is anything but near: computer- related books and magazines certainly occupy a prominent position on any bookstore's shelves ... and on mine as well.

With the exception of Broadhurst's The Woman's Guide to Online Services, all books reviewed here are published by women's presses, which might be indicative of how the market for computer books works. Marketing departments of trade publishers apparently still think that women, who constitute thirty percent of all Internet users in the U.S. (according to the pretty reliable count of the Georgia Tech 1997 survey) are a negligible quantity. Women's interests are thus either assumed to be the same as men's or, even worse, are subsumed under the general rubric of "family computing." Nothing illustrates this silent assumption better than the opening sentences of Judith Broadhurst's book: "Your first reaction to the idea of a book called The Woman's Guide to Online Services might be the same as mine: With so many online guides already, why do women need a special one? Let me assure you right off that this is not a dumbed-down book nor one solely about women's sections online, lipstick and lace, and home and hearth disguised as 'women's issues'" (Broadhurst, p.xvii).

Granted, "women" as such are not, especially for feminists, a clearly defined target group. However, all the books in review try to cover ground that is missing from most of the mainstream Internet and online guides: they go beyond the mere "how-and- where" approach and deal also with questions of why women should get connected. Those are important questions to ask at a time when "being online" seems to be more important than questions of content.

Published in 1995, The Woman's Guide to Online Services set a certain standard for the other women's guides that followed. Even though a good deal of the directory and resource information is outdated, given the fast pace of the online world, the Woman's Guide is an example that well- written and comprehensive guides to computer networks can still offer valuable insights that might otherwise be lost in favor of the latest fads of which the Internet has plenty to offer. Judith Broadhurst touches upon several of the important social and political issues surrounding computer-mediated communication, ranging from the "seven biggest factors that keep women offline" (pp.xxvi-xxix), which still have not changed all that much, to the "nature of the culture" (p.2) of online communication. She makes it clear that real-world and online power relations are much more important than the technology itself. However, her rather individualistic strategy to convince "one woman at a time" (p.xx) as a way to get more women involved in computer networks, leaves out larger questions of who gets access to what kind of information and under which conditions. The major part of the book is devoted to online resources, starting with traditional areas like parenting (including sites for kids but none specifically for girls) and the "domestic domain" (pp.103-113), but the book also includes in-depth chapters on career planning, business management, and online marketing, which are either completely missing from the other guides or get short shrift beyond listing resources (e.g., The Women's Guide to the Wired World.)

Broadhurst writes in a conversational style informed by her longstanding online experience, illustrating each chapter in the resource section of the book with quotes from (and pictures of) women and numerous success stories. A reference section, including hardware-buying tips, complete the guide.

The Internet for Women and The Women's Guide to the Wired World follow in the footsteps of Judith Broadhurst, although with a clearly feminist agenda. Both books discuss the obvious advantages (e.g., ease and low cost of distributing information worldwide) and problem zones (e.g., harassment, online pornography, privacy, security) of networked communication for women, illustrating their arguments with quotes from online activists. The Women's Guide, which developed out of the experiences of the Network of East-West Women (NEWW),(1) offers valuable practical advice on organizing women online (see, for example, the chapter on email meetings). Senjen and Guthrie complement their book with a chapter on the history of women in computing. The resource directory is certainly the heart of The Women's Guide and I particularly like its breadth and international scope, reaching from information about international women's networks, gender studies, African- Americans, and lesbians to all-women technical support on the Internet. The individual chapters are introduced and researched by experts in their respective fields, making The Women's Guide a truly collective endeavor.

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend the The Women's Guide for beginners thinking about getting online. The sections of a more technical nature fail to define the basic concepts behind computer networks in general and the Internet in particular. For example, the client-server concept is mentioned in passing in different contexts but nowhere is it systematically explained. At some points, "software" refers to both the client and the server, at other points only to the client. Being able to distinguish between the features of the client and the server helps a lot in dealing with error messages, which are an annoying, but unfortunately major, part of life online. Some areas are explained in unnecessary detail, as for example the different types of networks, while others are glossed over, like the specifics of the essential hardware. Some of the glossary definitions are misleading to a point where they might characterized as wrong: for example, the entries for "PPP" (it is simply wrong that a Point-to-Point Protocol connection bypasses the Internet Service Providers), the UART chip (this chip resides only in the computer and not in the modem as well), the rather esoteric "nick collision kills" on IRC (which are incorrectly defined and which have been eliminated by defining new rules for IRC servers), or UUCP (which gets translated into "unit-to-unit copy program" instead of "UNIX-to-UNIX copy program"). The Internet for Women, on the contrary, is always accurate in its descriptions and manages to explain complex technical questions in very accessible language. When appropriate, the explanations are supported by very helpful graphics and screenshots of the most common client programs (e.g., Eudora for email and the WWW browser Netscape).

Surfergrrrls is more concerned with the feminist reinterpretation of cyberspace. The book is not so much the Internet "guide" the title promises, although hands-on sections are scattered throughout. Since there is no index and the chapter headings use the "cool" Net lingo characteristic of the book, a "newbie" might be at a loss when it comes to actually locating information. Advanced users, however, might find some valuable and interesting tips. The real strength of the book lies in the chapters on popular culture þ not surprisingly, the field both authors come from þ which surrounds cyberspace and in which it is embedded. This book is probably not so much for Ethel and Lucy as for Tiffany and Michelle, who will certainly learn from the Surfergrrrls' advice: "Don't buy (into) Net cool. Make Net cool, baby" (p.165).

Joan Korenman's book is intended for, but not restricted to, faculty, teachers and students. This target group usually does not have to worry about hardware and network access. Therefore she can concentrate on the standard set of Internet services and clients, which are described in a very clear, well-structured, logical, and absolutely readable manner. About a third of the book is devoted to an annotated resource directory. Although the other guides might offer a lot more addresses, Korenman's selection features websites that have turned out to be relatively stable over the years and are themselves excellent starting points for further explorations. What gives the book extra value is an accompanying website that is frequently updated and maintained (http://research.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/updates.html).

Providing accurate and current information - and from my own experience I couldn't agree more - is for Joan Korenman more than just an additional feature. "Increasingly, I see this as a 'women's issue,'" she says. "I think that women more than men tend to be wary of technology and to assume that if they try something and it doesn't work, the fault lies with them - they did something wrong, they're not cut out for this, etc. So folks who put up a women-oriented website and then don't keep it up-to- date do a real disservice to women, unintentionally discouraging many from further use of the technology."(2) Korenman's website is, of course, one that lives up to her guideline. It is somewhat disappointing, on the other hand, to find a number of broken links on the Surfergrrrls Web pages (http://www.sealpress.com/surfergrrrls/) and to see the website for The Internet for Women (http://winchester.trl.oz.au/rye/index.html) wilting after a first effort.

What all the books very clearly demonstrate is the lively, active, and global involvement of women in electronic communication. I think that is a very encouraging development. The more women get involved with the Net as users and authors, the better the chances are that all women will shape the future of the online world.

[Elisabeth Binder (e.binder@fem-wien.cl.sub.de), geographer by education, lives in Austria and, since Summer 1993, on the Internet. She is the co-webstrix of "The Pheminist Cyber RoadShow" (http://www.oeh.uni-linz.ac.at/~lisa/), one of the first feminist websites in Austria when it started in early 1995.]

NOTES

1 A project of electronically connecting women in the USA and Western Europe with women in the former Eastern Bloc.

2 Quoted from an email conversation with Joan Korenman at the time her book was published.

[Eds. note: Though this book arrived in our office too late to be included in Elisabeth Binder's review, it is worthwhile to note WOW: WOMEN ON THE WEB: A GUIDE TO GENDER-RELATED RESOURCES ON THE INTERNET by Helen Fallon, published by the Women's Education Research and Resource Centre, University College Dublin, 1977. In addition to introductory chapters on the issue of gender in science and technology in general and the Internet in particular, Fallon's book offers a limited directory of table of contents services, electronic discussion lists, organizations, bibliographies, electronic texts, library catalogs, and the like accessible on the Internet. A simplified section on how to create a Web page, a glossary of terms used, and a bibliography of sources are other useful items in this ninety-four-page guide.]


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