The value of networking women for sustainability

Networking Women for Sustainability

Dr. Ulrike GretzelDr. Gillian Bowser

Global Women Scholars Network

IUCN World Conservation Congress, Jeju 2012

The Need

• Complex problem that requires multiplicity in insights, skills and approaches

• Sharing of information (and data collection)• Networking of people, documents and data• Knowledge flows• Social support

Availability of Technological Platforms

Value of Networks

• Dynamic, flexible• Robust• Efficient for spreading messages:

multidirectional flows, more likely to process messages from known others

• Collective intelligence; avoidance of group-think if diverse and global

• Affiliation can be informal• Self-organizing

Scalable

Why Network Women?

• Have different perspective on sustainability

• Often lack the support networks available to their male counterparts

• Lack role models

Global Women Scholars Network

http://www.youtube.com/user/Globalwomenscholars?feature=watch

Associating Climate Change and Women

Networking the Networks3 Decades of Women at Rio

Challenges

• Incentives• Commitment• Need for high tech and high touch• Sustaining initial excitement• Critical mass• Champions and Freeriders

http://globalwomenscholars.wordpress.com/

ugretzel@uow.edu.augillian.bowser@colostate.edu