Busy Women's Guide to the Internet
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Busy Women's Guide to the Internet
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Below you will find feature information and links to Women's Human Rights as well as tools to help you harness the potential of the Internet. Funding for this guide has been generously provided by Nancy's Very Own Foundation.
Chapter 1: History of the Internet in 1000 Words
Chapter 2: Getting Started
Chapter 3: Getting Acquainted with the World Wide Web
Chapter 4: Becoming Part of the Internet Community
Chapter 1: The History of the Internet in 1000 Words
Athought the first users of the Internet were predominantly male, women have quickly recognized the potential of this rapidly expanding technology. The 1995 United Nation's Fourth World conference on Women in Beijing proved to be a watershed event in the appropriation of information technology by women. At the Conference, tens of thousands of women were introduced to email as a tool through which they could lobby, campaign and exchange information with one another across the globe. (Association for Progressive Communications
(APC) Women's Networking Support Programme, Information and Communication Technologies: A Women's Agenda).
Security should never be overlooked in any situation. Passwords should be kept confidential at all times and changed frequently. Ideally, unique passwords should be used for different access levels. For example, your login password and your email passwords should not be the same. Back-up Procedures Computers are not infallible. Power outages, surges, viruses or operating system errors can jeopardize your computer and all stored information. Internet Use Considerations When choosing an ISP it is a good idea to ask them about their security provisions for a range of potential situations, from "hostile invasions" to the protection of your login data. Threats from Viruses Viruses are destructive software programs that can enter the computer via disks, emails and downloaded files, causing irreparable damage to your computer. Recent destructive and highly publicized viruses include 'Melissa' and 'Worm'. A "Trojan Horse" is a type of harmful program that at first appears to perform a useful function. Instead, the program invades your system and then self- destructs causing extensive damage (such as erasing an entire hard drive).
How to Prepare for your Search Getting the search results you want will depend on the searching methods you use. To prepare for a successful search, consider the following tips.
How to Evaluate Your Search Results The Web is like any other information source and must be examined critically. Reading critically is arguably more important with Internet material due to the relative absence of content or quality controls found in other media sources such as print journals. Anyone with an ISP, access to a web server and some knowledge of HTML (programming language) can post their own webpage.
How to Bookmark Websites 'Bookmarking' saves sites for future access. Internet Explorer (IE) has 'Favorites' while Netscape uses 'Bookmarks' to denote saved sites. When you come across a site you would like to save, go to the menu bar on your browser and select either 'bookmark' or 'Favorites', depending on your browser, a box will appear providing you with the option to add or edit your list of bookmarks. Once the site has been added, any time the site is selected from the list the browser will connect to it.
On-line Databases and Bibliographies
Activism and Networks
On-line Resources
Organizations
Research Institutes
United Nations and the Beijing Fourth World Conference On Women
With thanks: original site created by Kelly Mannix. Maintained and updated by Nina Cherington. |
Welcome to the Busy Woman's Guide to the
Internet page. This guide was written to assist the CEDAW Impact Study and
Network NGOs using the Internet as part of the IWRP.
Origins of the Internet
To
order The Busy Women's Guide to the Internet: Activism and Research On-line