Feminist reflections on internet policies

As part of the Feminist Internet Research Network, we are including a series of short pieces on reflections by researchers on the ground, and in this piece a researcher talks about the experience of doing research with workers, unions and companies and of trying to determine the extent of sexual harassment or caste prejudice in the platform economy around domestic labour

As part of the Feminist Internet Research Network, we are including a series of short pieces on reflections by researchers on the ground, and in this piece, the researcher speaks of the difficulties of setting up interviews with domestic workers, often torn between home and work obligations.

As part of the Feminist Internet Research Network, we are including a series of short pieces on reflections by researchers on the ground, and in this piece, the writer explores how it is possible but also difficult for her to do social work and awareness building, and shift to doing research.

Women who do domestic work are able to now find employers through online platforms, but does this new avenue and promise of the digital economy ensure that their labour rights are upheld? In this short series, we read about four researchers who directly interviewed with workers as part of a project in the Feminist Internet Research Network. Here are the reflections of the researchers on ethics, values, and their own learnings.

After the convening "Making a Feminist Internet in Africa and the Diaspora (MFIAfrica)", held in Johannesburg from 28 to 31 October 2019, a lot of debates, dreams and conversations kept going around among the women who were there.

In this editorial article, Sheena Magenya challenges the dominante narrative on Africa and technology, claiming for more African feminists and feminisms on, in, around the internet, to counter the idea that technology somehow levels the playing field for all, and is an infallible solution to all our problems.

As a professor of Communications at Madrid's Carlos III University, every year I ask my students studying journalism to look at the Feminist Principles of the Internet, a set of principles that provides a framework for women's movements to articulate and explore issues related to technology. After reading the principles and researching the context that made this framework necessary, each student chose one principle that particularly resonated with them and wrote their own piece inspired by it.

In this article, Shivani Lal shares her experience attending the Imagine a Feminist Internet workshop in Malaysia, on November 2019. Shivani inquieres how one can imagine embodiment in our “disembodied” online lives as a part of our very networked lives today.

It is fundamental to ensure that when organising, we do not overlook women who do not have “feminist” on their bios but are resisting and defying in their homes, schools and workplaces. When we represent, we need to make sure that we do not get carried away by the power and fame of being at the forefront of movements and organisations; that we do not forget the women that don’t have access to the same spaces because they are illiterate, disabled, poor or otherwise discriminated against or marginalised.

No Roses From My Mouth is a collection of poems written in jail by Dr. Stella Nyanzi, the feminist poet and academic who is currently imprisoned in Luzira Women’s Prison in Uganda. In this article, Wairimũ Mũrĩithi not only review the book, but also talks about the feminist solidarity movement that is organising offline and online actions for Nyanzi freedom. At the same time, this is a reflection on the interconnected struggles that Nyanzi represent, from freedom of expresion online for marginalised people, to the critique of prison conditions.

In order for our movements to be successful, not only do we have to find each other, but these connections have to be sustained with intention. Within our movements, we are faced with internal challenges because every movement is founded on relationships, and relationships are vulnerable to all kinds of challenges. From our reflections in this regard, we delved into discussions about the factors that cause ruptures within our movements, and brainstormed how we could work to ensure that a rupture does not become the destruction of the entire movement.

When is the last time that you daydreamed, spending hours in imagining some unrealistic ideas? Have you found yourself continuously get overwhelmed by different issues happening in this world as a feminist? Is it difficult for you to take a break, a break for fantasizing, and enjoying your daydreams?

Access to the internet and ICTs can often be about creating and finding surprising opportunities and uses. If women are familiar with smartphones and able to use them, then this is one way of ensuring that the next generation of girls are also able to access and adopt technology.

Ikhtyar African Feminist Collective officially joined the global feminist internet movement toward the end of 2017, with the aim to forge a widely accessible path for Arabic-speaking feminists to join forces and support internet freedoms from an intersectional feminist standpoint. 

Through two stories from Kenyan women, this article shows how women get harassed online, especially when they express themselves in ways that do not conform to the patriarchal order in the society which they live in.

The first "Making a Feminist Internet: Movement building in a digital age in Africa" convening, held in Johannesburg in October and brought together feminists from 18 African countries. This post gathers some of their shared ideas and conversations.

Today, feminist activists are claiming that digital rights are human rights, too. There is a robust community of feminist organisations, collectives, activists and more who are striving to strengthen digital rights. Amongst them, cyberfeminists, especially from the global South, are going deeper into making digital rights a reality for women, LBT individuals, non-English speaking people in the global South, and more.

While many parts of the world have acknowledged some aspects of gender inequality and have progressively changed their practices and legislations towards the promotion of women’s rights, the protection of sexual and reproductive rights (particularly the right to have an abortion) remains a taboo subject. As such, in some countries, abortion is still criminalized in complete disregard of women’s right to self-determination, dignity, health, bodily autonomy, and, ultimately, their right to life.

What can feminists expect from the revolution of our times? In this article about the recent uprising in Hong Kong against the control of the Beijing government, we take a look at the complexities that feminists and LGBTQI+ activists have to live with, in spite of working for freedom and democracy alongside and in movements.

We are in an age increasingly shaped and inflected by digital and networked technologies, which can act to augment, amplify or disrupt existing discrimination, exclusion and inequality. Using the Feminist Principles of the internet as a framework, this article examines the different facets of the intersection between digitally networked technologies and feminism at the areas of economy, autonomy and data, as well as movement building.