Meeting women with technologies can be the beginning of a brand new world.

In the last ten years, the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become one of the main means and sources for exchange of information also a mechanism for creating partnership networks among the noncommercial not-for-profit organizations (NGOs) as well in Bulgaria, as worldwide.

The active involvement and the equal participation of women in the ideological development and everyday work of the civil society sector in Bulgaria is an exceptionally important phenomenon in the whole country. It is out of doubt the fact as much in national as in international aspect the fact that a considerable part of the NGOs, active in the area of education, culture, social activities, human rights protection and environmental issues are created, developed and managed mainly by women.

In this context, the team of Internet Rights Bulgaria Foundation (IRBF) believes that raising the capacity for access and strategic use of ICTs by women, working in the civil society sector in Bulgaria can contribute to increasing of their potential in personal and professional aspects, for the strategic development of the initiatives of the NGOs, as well as to support and stimulate the cooperation and sustainable development of the civil society sector as a whole.

In relation to this, in the period between November 2004 and June 2005, IRBF, as Women’s Informaiton Technologies Transfer Focal Point in Bulgaria, carried out a national research called: Strategic use of ICTs by women, working in the civil society sector in Bulgaria.

The aims of the research were following:

 To define their level of access to ICTs and Internet;
 To research the extent and the quality of their knowledge with ICTs;
 To estimate their motivation for further qualification for working with ICTs and the resources of the world wide web;
 To identify concrete problems and needs, related to the strategic use of ICTs by women in the civil society sector;

The research aimed at helping the further activities of IRBF as well as to other right protecting NGOs, funders, academic and professional bodies on national and international level in:

1. Defining and creating of new and specific areas for use of ICTs by women for professional, institutional and civil development in Bulgaria;
2. Determining directions and concrete topics for specialized training and consultation;
3. Organizing new approaches and initiatives for development of ongoing cooperation and online networks for mutual support among organizations and initiatives, related to protection of social, human rights, the environment, working with the problems of the civil society, in which take part women from Bulgaria, Europe and worldwide.

Target group

The target group of the research were women on managing and decision-making positions, working in Bulgarian not-for-profit NGOs in the areas of women’s rights, culture, education, youth development and building local communities.

The presented in this document data is gathered from: questionnaire with 59 respondents (out of 46 NGOs); interview-discussion with 12 women; four focus groups with 42 participants in total, who met while 3 national and one international training sessions; visit and observation of the environment and functionality of 16 Bulgarian organizations. Almost half of the respondents live and work in different by size, region and economic status towns from the countryside, and 52% are from Sofia. 91% of the respondents are having higher degree, of which 41% are in the humanitarian area of specialization.

General Results

 The participants in the research are greatly motivated and convinced in the need to use ICTs in the everyday work. The majority of them, 97,4 % use ICTs every day and all the time in their work, while 2,6% use it only a few times per month. At the same time, just half of them can use computer at home (56,4%). For the majority of the women-respondents, the computer use is opportunity from work (94,9%), while comparatively small part of them use Internet centers for this aim (12,8%). No matter of the already existing Internet access, in most settlements, women from the civil society area use the Internet mostly to work and to fulfill their professional tasks.

 Women from civil society area use new information and communication technologies with set purposes, but not always strategic enough since majority of them use computers mostly for word-processing, work with dictionaries, electronic tables and presentations.

 Internet is used by most of the NGOs, involved in the research, and it is a main mean for communication, for search and find of information for support and funding of new projects and initiatives, which helps them to receive information on time, as well as direct access to calls for funding in European and international aspect.

 Women working in the civil society field clearly assess the need for availability and possibility to freely use and publish information directly online. 61,4% of the respondents state that their organisation has their own website, but more than half of them rely on external assistant for supporting it. The rest 38,5% say their organisation needs a website, but there are mainly technical and financial obstacles for its realisation. With relation to this, 79,5% consider, that it is necessary for them to fill in, edit and manage the data on their own websites.

 With respect to the website content, women from NGOs orient mainly towards publishing common information about their organisation (56,4%), information related to projects (46,2%) and news item related to their NGO (41%). Less than one third of the respondents state they will publish specialized information related to their target group or field of work.

 Women from the NGO field are purposeful and very independent in their studies for gaining new knowledge and skills in the ICTs area. For the means of this research as well as fro identifying more in concrete the needs of the civil society sector. 94,9% of the respondents have shown willingness to acquire additional skills in the area of ICTs, as well as 82,2% need to get specif in skills, in order to be able to update the information on their websites.

 Free Software is still not very popular among the Bulgarian NGOs: only 38,5% state they use programs based on Free Software, whereas 25,6% of them have replied they do not know what type of software they use. A big part of their respondents (61,5%), answer positively to the question whether they pay for the software they use, which in most cases mean a serious load of the budget of these organisations, as well as availabilty of technical limits with updating information.

To learn more about the conclusions of the research as well as the recommendations, you can download the printed brochure.

nap_en.pdf (6 MB)