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Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday November 8, 1997
Women who have missed the computer revolution - even those most fearful of the household PC - are logging on at new courses. KIRSTY NEEDHAM reports.
THAT mysterious room in the house where men and children disappear for hours to sit in front of the family computer can seem a no-go zone to some women - particularly those who have been bypassed as the general workforce skilled up with computer training because they were at home raising children.
Ruth Kerle, 53, of Killara, admits that until recently she avoided computers at any cost. "I was terrified - I would go to Computers Anonymous if I could," Kerle says. And she is not alone.
A report on the impact of computers in Australian home life, commissioned by Apple last year, identified nine stereotypes of family members. Compared to "computer-whiz males", women looked nervous around PCs, being variously described as "alienated, non-computer-literate females" and "females anxious to gain computer skills in the workplace". Best was the "content, non-computer-literate female", a mother who said the closest she got to a computer was the microwave.
A separate study on Families and Electronic Entertainment from the Australian Broadcasting Authority found that although mothers tended to be the rule-makers within a household, they were less comfortable with computers and did not use them as often as men, impacting on rules surrounding the computer. But as financial institutions advertise the convenience of Internet banking on TV, CD-ROMs revolutionise recipe storage, word processing packages offer a
time-saving way to type letters and e-mail becomes a convenient way to keep in touch with overseas relatives, computers are becoming inexorably integrated into everyone's lives, even Mum's.
Kerle, who manages the books for the family consulting business, realised this year it was time to take the plunge and learn how to master the new PC that had arrived in her home. On the suggestion of a friend working at the local doctor's surgery, she signed up for a course at the Easy Learn Computer Centre, Lane Cove, which specialises in introductory training for women.
"I didn't know what a mouse was when I first went there," Kerle says. "You can't go on like that - you have to catch up with it all. I have a grandchild being born and want to know about computers before he or she does."
Tricia Higgins, who founded the Easy Learn centre with Sue Moore, says the school started a year ago with an intake of two students, one of whom soon dropped out after breaking a leg, but now the pair are kept busy holding classes every weekday morning and most afternoons.
Higgins, 43, and Moore, 49, have been in the situation that most of their students find themselves in - knowing nothing about computers because they had left the workforce to look after their children at about the same time as the computer revolution hit.
"I hadn't worked for years," Moore says. "I had been doing fundraising and getting involved in my children's school."
But finding herself a single mother and needing to return to work, she enrolled in a course designed to help women re-start their careers at Crows Nest TAFE. The six-month program included introductory computer training.
NSW TAFE's manager of retraining, Robin Booth, says: "In every area of industry and study, people now need to be familiar with the computing basics of keyboard skills, database development and spreadsheets. These women often need to update skills they already have, such as typing, to use a computer keyboard.
"Frequently they have phobias and problems because they feel they can't keep up-to-date. It is helpful that they are in a class with other women."
Both taking a shine to computers, Higgins and Moore went on to study three years of specialised computer courses together. Later finding jobs in corporate training within the education system, they discovered over coffee one day that they both wanted to teach other women what they knew.
On the day of my visit, "happy birthday Easy Learn" is scrawled on the whiteboard at the front of a room overlooking the Lane Cove swimming pool. Ten computers are arranged in two rows, handbags hanging off chairs. There are worried expressions and hands clasped to mouths in concentration as students gingerly tap keyboards with two fingers.
Higgins and Moore work as a team. One lectures from the front of the room; the other moves from student to student to offer extra assistance.
The beginners' course starts with a fictitious shopping spree. Students are given a list from a computer store, and the difference between hardware and software, operating systems and application software is patiently explained. By the end, the class is au fait with gigabytes, and often able to catch out husbands and children fond of using techno-talk they don't really understand.
Moore says: "There is a great satisfaction that we can open up this world to them that before was so alien."
Linda Adler, 46, of Gordon, enrolled in the course because of the push towards computer record-keeping at the Anglican Retirement Village where she works as a nurse. Adler admits that her civil engineer husband and children, aged 10 and 13, also seemed to know more about computers than she did.
Attempts to learn the basics of computing from her family didn't work: "They expect you to pick it up so quickly, it made me feel I kept doing the wrong thing."
Higgins says some students have had limited contact with computers at work. "They might work in a medical practice, for example, and only use one program. They don't know the whole of the computer. They also usually have children they want to help, and their husband knows something about computers. It is all about not wanting to be left behind ... They want to understand what it is about and be involved."
© 1997 Sydney Morning Herald