What is Resource Centres

This chapter arises from the authors’ research interests in gender and adult learning in the community, with a special focus on how gender is enacted in communities of practice such as nonprofit women’s organizations. These organizations play a key role in adult learning—nonformally through workshops and programs and informally through mentoring, collaboration, and information sharing. They also work informally and incidentally through advocacy work for social change to redress systemic gender-based discrimination. This chapter assesses how well the services and learning that happen in this context have evolved with the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) by women’s groups, in this case organizational websites. The authors place this discussion within the context of a small but growing literature examining the integration of ICTs within community development. In addition, we draw on feminist theoretical understandings and critiques of technology as it affects the lives of women. Although ICTs provide opportunities to further the cause of gender equality globally, inequalities persist to limit the realization of this potential.