Connecting women: the potential and use of electronic conferencing

The topic for this paper emerged as a result of my role in managing many electronic conferences in my work at the Water Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC), Loughborough University, UK . It soon became clear that certain disparities existed between levels of the men’s and women’s participation in these forums, although the extent and reasons for this were unclear. This paper aims to investigate the extent of these differentials, and to explore some of the reasons for women’s greater reluctance to take part in electronic discussions of this type. The findings are based on a rapid, initial exploratory survey, the purpose of which was to identify whether there was an issue here worth looking at. The results suggest that there is more to learn about the gendered nature of e-conferencing and that an in-depth study would be beneficial to provide guidance on the design and implementation of future women-friendly e-conferences.