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Tuesday, March 27, 2001 Internet maven comes to town to promote 'herstory'By DONNA CALLEA | News-Journal Staff Writer ORMOND BEACH — All things being equal, Irene Stuber might be resting on her laurels now. But all things aren't equal. Not for women, according to the 72-year-old great-grandmother, who is founder and director of the Women's Internet Information Network, the oldest and largest feminist-based site on the World Wide Web. Anyone who assumes the women's movement has moved everyone who's needed moving and has now moved on to something else, couldn't be more mistaken, she contends. "If the younger generation thinks we're equal now, they're not paying attention," says Stuber, who's been paying attention for more than 50 years, the last 10 of which she's spent promoting women's history and feminism on the Internet. Sometimes referred to as "cybergranny," the former South Florida investigative reporter now based in Arkansas was here recently visiting her brother, area resident Rick Ferrell, and marking National Women's History Month. Women's history, which she refers to as "herstory," is a subject Stuber strongly promotes on her Web site (www.undelete.org). Her heroes include people such as Abigail Adams, who was an ardent proponent of women's rights at the time of the American Revolution, and suffragettes like Carrie Chapman Catt, for whom Stuber has named her Internet newsletter "Catt's Claws." But she acknowledges that most people probably have no idea at all that Congress, with bipartisan support, has declared March to be National Women's History Month since 1987. Women have been making history since the beginning of, well, history, she notes - though their contributions have been pretty much off the record until recently. And the portion of the population that's female still has a long way to go in terms of securing the same opportunities and advantages afforded to the portion that's male, she adds. For example, Stuber contends that although "the average woman today starts off getting a very similar wage to a man, within 10 years she falls behind dramatically and is not promoted at the same rate." She also is concerned about reproductive rights, including guaranteeing access to drugs designed to prevent pregnancy. Stuber's own history of activism began when she herself was denied what she considered basic rights. The Ohio native, who married at 19 and had three children by the time she was 25, says she came of age when "women's rights were much less than they are today." She remembers having earned about $500 one year from some writing she did, depositing it in her own checking account, and then writing a check for a set of golf clubs she wanted. But the check was bounced by her bank. The banker, she says, told her that "no woman should have that kind of money," and transferred the funds, without her permission, to her husband's account. She also faced the challenges of making a living for herself and her children after she was divorced from her husband, who she says came from a wealthy family but was never made to pay any child support. Stuber settled in Miami and then Fort Lauderdale, where she found her niche as an urban affairs reporter, specializing in uncovering corruption. She also became involved in the Civil Rights movement, and then focused her activist energies on the women's movement, rising in the ranks of the National Organization for Women and serving as state president in Arkansas. However, she has since parted ways with NOW, which she says "has forgotten its roots." When she learned of the untapped resources for reaching others via computers, Stuber, who was by then in her 60s, became one of the first women to establish a Web site. Stuber says she plans to fight on "until there is not a breath left in me." "I know we're going to win," she adds. "But it's going to take a long time." |
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