Each person in this room today "knows" every facet of the talk I am about to give. But there are "ways" of knowing and "levels" of knowing. Tom Paine, the great American patriot, put it best: "A long habit of accepting a wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." We must begin to think that in the developing world, women's present place in the information revolution is so wrong, so egregious, and so deplorable that we must, at last, make a meaningful effort to put it right. I know, as you know, that the World Bank and the IMF have, in the past few years, made an extraordinary effort to understand and become sensitive to women and their needs in the developing world. It is now past time to accept an "information super-highway" on which men in the developed world, and even some in the developing world, are traveling in fast cars while the vast majority of women in the developing world are walking barefoot on dirt roads.

The expression "information is power" is much in vogue these days. And we agree, at last, that women have an essential role in sustainable human development. But, I ask, how have these twin realizations interacted? I suggest that for many in the developed world they spin, endlessly separated, like planets, never really touching, never striking each other to produce the sparks which ignite action. It is, more than ever, important to explore the ways in which the information revolution and the empowerment of women may be brought together.

Three fundamental convictions inspire my talk today:

1) Women need full and unrestricted access to information if they are to take their rightful place in the world.

2) Women should be involved in every stage of gathering and disseminating information and should determine what information is to be collected, and how and in what form it is to be shared.

3) All information gathered by worldwide organizations should include complete data on women, and this information should be disseminated in a form accessible and useable to women in every geographic and demographic setting.

Let me give some very short examples of these three principles in relation to women in the developing world.

First: Why do women in the developing world need full and unrestricted access to information? Because these women cannot benefit from laws of which they are unaware, laws which would help them in the workplace, in getting and keeping property, and in voting for officials who would serve them in their governments, and, most importantly, the ability to see that laws already on the books are truly enforced. Without the basic information on how to limit the number of children they will bear, women will forever face life as third-class citizens. Without this information, these women are as powerless within their families as they are in the larger culture.

Second: Why should women be involved in gathering and disseminating information? Just consider how little of the information in today's world pertains to women's lives in the developing world. If asked, they will tell us what information would be most useful to them and in what form they wish to receive it. Information should not just travel one way, from the developed world to the developing nations, but also the other way. These women should be encouraged to collect their information: indigenous art, stories, oral histories, religious culture -- indigenous knowledge of all kinds that has been previously disregarded yet has real value to the developed world. This listening has hardly begun. Yet not to involve women from the developing world in the discussion, fully and completely, will be carrying on a one-way conversation. The bitter end of colonialism should have taught us how useless and how harmful are one-way conversations -- have we, in the developed world, learned, really learned our lesson? The jury is still out.

Third: Why is data on women in the developing world important and why must they have better access to it? Our experience in the U.S. should have taught us a lesson; we gathered data on heart disease only from men, oblivious to the fact that women too suffer from heart disease. Women in the developing world raise the children, do much of the back-breaking daily work, farm, weave the cloth, negotiate for food and labor, and much else. But much of the world's information has to do with "men's work." Further, this information is disseminated throughout cities, and this is as true of the developing world as it is of the developed world. People in rural areas -- especially women -- come up very short if they receive any information at all. In the United States, 95.7% of the public libraries are now connected to the Internet. But women in the developing world, especially those in the rural sections, cannot walk to a library because there are no libraries. If women are to assert their rightful place in the world's evolving social, intellectual, political and economic systems, we of the developed world must work to see that women, all women, have access to and use of the world's gigantic, and still growing, information base. We must also consider that networking -- made so easy by access to the internet -- between women of all countries and diverse backgrounds, could generate valuable insights and engender confidence in their own ability to cope with their lives in a swiftly changing world.

Again, "Information," as we are often told, "is power." Less often do we follow that statement with a discussion of "the responsibilities of gathering and disseminating information." What, then, I ask today, is our responsibility toward the women of the developing world -- those women who often labor beyond endurance for their families? For too long we have congratulated ourselves on our information know-how without investigating our responsibilities with the same intensity. We must extend the present very valuable discussion of the "digital divide," now current in the U.S., to include all women in all countries of every socio-economic condition.

I suggest that we have a great responsibility to make access to information a part of "women's empowerment." That women in the developing world must be empowered should be obvious to us all. But just how we go about this task is not as clear. What I do know is that bringing the world of information to these women and giving them a chance to contribute to it is a large part of the answer. NCLIS' mandate is, in part, "to appraise the adequacies and deficiencies of current library and information resources." This mandate does not stop at the water's edge. We are, therefore, concerned now, and in the future, with women's access to information in the developing world as well as in the developed part of the globe. The two organizations here today, the World Bank and the IMF, are in a unique position to help ensure that women in the developing world have input in, and access to, all the information presently at the fingertips of the developed world. Not until this task has been accomplished can we say that women are, at last, truly empowered.

Thank you.