gisw13_chapters

over 10,000 delegates. It was a powerful messageto the world: there is no innate barrier to womenusing computer technology. JCA sent three femalemembers to join the APC team. They constructedinternet servers, held email training for many women’srights activists, and reported from the venueusing the net.JCA also started JCA-NET in 1997 as a businessunit, which provides internet services for socialmovements, and carried out the following projectsin cooperation with the Asia-Japan Women’s ResourceCenter (AJWRC):VAWW-NetIn November 1997, AJWRC and the Asian Center forEntrepreneurial Initiatives (ASCENT) organised aninternational conference on violence against womenin war and conflict situations (VAWW) in Tokyo.Fifty female experts gathered for this conference,where all of them presented cases detailing theirindividual circumstances and discussed possibleresponses to such cases. They compiled the discussionsinto the “Tokyo Declaration”. The event wasmeaningful in that they were able to highlight casesfrom Asia.They decided to organise a network – VAWW-Net– acting on issues concerning violence against womenin war and conflict situations. They started a mailinglist to exchange their knowledge, as well as theirviews. The mailing list has been quite instrumental infacilitating their activities. It is linked to the APC network’snewsgroup called “women vaw”, which hasbeen accessed by many women around the globe.AWORCThe Asian Women’s Resource Exchange (AWORC) isan internet-based women’s information service andnetwork in Asia. It is an initiative geared towards developingcooperative approaches and partnershipsin increasing access and exploring the applicationof new information and communications technologies(ICTs) for women’s empowerment.AWORC resulted from a workshop organised byIsis International-Manila on 20-23 April 1998. Theyexplored strategies for electronic resource sharingand networking among women’s information andresource centres in the region. It is part of their continuedeffort to develop empowering informationand communication models that strengthen thewomen’s movement in Asia.fem-netA network for women’s movements initiated inMarch 1999, fem-net was an electronic forum forthose engaged in the women’s movement, andthose interested in women’s issues. It was a combinationsystem of mailing lists, APC newsgroups andweb bulletin boards. Although it became the foundationfor a culture of using mailing lists amongfeminists, it did not strategically share informationthrough the web, and activity by fem-net sloweddown gradually.In the early 2000s, while local organisations thatwork internationally continued to use the internetas a useful tool for information exchange, feministswho act locally tended to avoid the internet out offear. One significant cause was the intense criticismof feminism by conservative groups in the first halfof the 2000s.Backlash against “co-participation”and “gender-free”The Basic Law for a Gender-Equal Society (DanjoKyodo Sankaku Shakai Kihon-ho, hereafter referredto as the Basic Law) was approved unanimously in1998, and came into force in 1999. Subsequently,municipal governments across Japan, starting withTokyo and Saitama, developed their own ordinancesfor the promotion of gender equality. A largeamount of tax revenue was injected into municipalitiesall over the country for the construction ofgender equality centres and for many educationalinitiatives.However, as mentioned, the notions of “co-participation”and “gender-free” resulted in a backlashfrom conservative groups. The conservatives successfullypassed a conservative-friendly genderequality ordinance in Ube City, Yamaguchi Prefecturein June 2002. The ordinance included phrasessuch as “We must not unilaterally dismiss the ideathat there is innate masculinity and innate femininity”and “We must not dismiss the role of thefull-time housewife.” These were directly contraryto the aims written in the Basic Law. The followingyear, 2003, Domoto Akiko, the feminist (and female)governor of Chiba prefecture, failed to passthe Gender Equality Ordinance bill; it was the firsttime that a bill proposed by a governor had failed tobe passed in the history of the Chiba Prefectural Assembly.While the conservatives became energisedas a result of the Ube ordinance, the cases in Ubeand Chiba shocked feminist scholars and activists,and they started to be more vocal on the issue ofthe conservative backlash.Backlash spreads onlineThe internet became a pivotal field of discoursefor conservatives. Former Tokyo Women’s Collegepsychology professor Hayashi Michiyoshi, journalistChiba Tensei, independent writer Okamoto152 / Global Information Society Watch