Video Conference in Costa Rica Reports on Book

San José. March 6, 2008.

In commemoration of March 8, International Women's Day, the Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED) organized a video conference to report interactively on the book Mujeres, metamorfosis del efecto mariposa.

The conference discussed women's great struggles and exploits throughout the history of the world and specifically in Costa Rica.

Women workers from UNED, from the fields of technology and gender attended, alongside women from eleven rural communities, including Palmares, Siquirres, Cañas and Puriscal participated via telecenters.

María introduced “Lucy,” noting that historically women have sustained a paradigm of caring, which is devalued today by the patriarchal market/money paradigm in spite of the fact that this paradigm is destroying humanity’s ability to continue living on the planet.

As a current example of the paradigm of caring, she presented the case of the “Three Foresters.” One is Manar Faraj, a young woman from Palestine, who in the midst of the social and environmental devastation of her home, says that “she keeps a tree in her heart” to keep her goals in perspective: to protect life in the midst of so much death. Another is Tetyana Tkachenko, who was a preschool teacher in Chernobyl in 1998 in the ex-Soviet Union at the time of the nuclear plant accident, which made it impossible for human beings to live in the area and whose radiation also affected other parts of Europe and the world. She said that the name they gave to the deserted area was the “rusty forest” because in images of their homes, all of the foliage had turned red because of the radiation. Another “forester” is Wangari Maathai, from Kenya, Africa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Price for planting trees. She said, “Planting a tree is planting a seed of peace.”

The second part of the presentation was opened to women in the communities connected via video conference to share their thoughts about the women they had just heard about. An elder from Puriscal, a town west of San José, spoke about their experience of having started a recycling group three years earlier. The group went from house to house collecting “useful” items that had been discarded to bring them to other houses where they were needed. Today they have a business with their own truck for collection and redistribution.

The women from Cañas in the Guanacaste Province in northern Costa Rica shared their experiences of caring holistically. One of them explained that in her life she had attended more than 3,000 births without failing one. “Women have been nurses and doctors, because sometimes doctors don’t dare to take on a difficult birth for fear of failing; but I have never rejected one, always concentrated on helping the woman who is giving birth.”

One of the UNED employees who attended the video conference in person at the central headquarters of the university in Sabanilla, San José, had come from the city of Puntarenas in the Pacific Coast.. Her email after the presentation shows another type of impact. “Dear María, congratulations on yesterday's video conference. It was worth traveling from Puntarenas to attend and I can’t wait for the book to come out so I can buy it. Don’t forget that we are waiting for you here. Keep up the good work, even though so much remains to be done. Sincerely, Jeannette Rodríguez Gómez, ‘Foresteer’ of Puntarenas.”

Costa Rican women features in the presentation included the exploits of the “Women in White” in 1947 who took to the streets to challenge the Tinoco dictatorship to maintain clean and democratic elections. Another were the women in the 80s who accomplished the adoption of the Law for Real Equality under the leadership of Margarita Penón. Also featured was the national movement of women against gender violence.

Women from all regions had experiences to share about their community and national actions against violence against women. One example is the one presented by the women from Siquirres in the Caribbean province of Limón in the Atlantic Coast who shared in the video conference their experiences in organizing a group against violence in their community to support women survivors and provide information about where to go to find further help.

Ending with a round of applause to and from each video center involved, a visual homage to women’s contributions to the construction of UNED in its history constituted the last presentation. UNED has definitely been build with a large presence of women since I stares three decades ago.

Refreshments in the central telecenter conclude the event, in the yearly commemoration worldwide since the United Nations declared March 8 International Women's Day.