Feminist reflections on internet policies

GenderIT and Locnet invited women who work in community networks to share their experiences in the times of COVID-19.. This is one of the stories that got to be told about the acts of care in communication technlogies under the pandemic.

A beautiful essay that explores how to navigate the complexities of sexuality and personhood for Ethiopians, and how the traditional form known as qene or wax-and-gold is the perfect metaphor for negotiating and living dual realities.

Feminist activists have played an important role in raising issues around freedom of expression and especially in the internet rights community; also in pointing out how internet rights of those marginalised on account of gender, sexuality, gender expression are even more precarious. But where is the funding for feminist work on technology and infrastructure?

In the third part of the webcomic "The footprint of the Internet", Nadège tells us how green washing hides the complex intersections between technologies, territory and capitalism. But the resistance and self-determination of communities persists...

Ani Hao interviews Bárbara Paes, a young Brazilian feminist, co-founder of Minas Programam. In this conversation they delve into Black feminist activism in Brazil, feminism funding and the co-optation of gender issues in technology spaces.

People living with HIV and AIDs in India face greater risk of exposure in relation to their private health information and data, especially as the government, hospitals, insurance companies etc. collect data. COVID-19 crisis also raises concerns whether big data is a tool of prevention and health care or at the service of government repression.

A three part series that dives into the concerns around privacy and data in Africa in the context of artificial intelligence and also covid-19 from a feminist data justice perspective.

Inhabiting internet causes a huge footprint on land, nature and bodies. An impact that can be violent and abusive. But we can learn how to create a more attentive and sensitive relationship with digital technologies.

All over the world, prisons are potentially ground for the spread of the COVID-19 contagion, but another factor at play is the role of repressive governments at this moment continuing to imprison activists. This article looks at what prisoners can still access from jail and the effectiveness of online "visits" for prisoners from their lawyer and families in India.

In this brief submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, APC identifies the nexus between domestic violence and online gender-based violence in the context of COVID-19 drawing on some issues to consider from country-led and regional case studies.

Education going online has posed a series of challenges especially for those living in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world where widespread access to the internet is not a given. This article explores how the Zambian government must show a stronger commitment and take measures to address how girls can access online education.

Governments around the world are increasingly turning to technology as a tool to combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. In India, these tools have ranged from various contact tracing apps to using drones. Privacy concerns have been raised about the use of such intrusive digital technologies by activists, lawyers and concerned citizens. But while these are valid, a crucial element remains unrecognised: what is at stake is not merely our informational privacy, but our autonomy, dignity, bodily integrity, and equality.

LGBTQIA+ people are often already isolated, invisibilised in their families and sometimes also facing abuse. In this article, mental health professionals speak about the vulnerability of these groups and people during the lockdown and how fragile links of community and support are still being built.

The digital rights movement needs to become deliberately and intentionally inclusive. We need to actively engage with how technologies and the internet are racist, as well as how they perpetuate other oppressions through silence.  

In this article, the Zimbabwean feminist researcher and writer Fungai Machirori challenges the idea of "the global South" as a homogenous space.

How does working online change and challenge gender dynamics at the workplace? Here we learn more through the experience of a barrister about how some of the changes brought about by COVID-19 could potentially be liberating and eventually change the workplace to make it better for women.

From 28 to 31 October 2019, 54 feminists from 19 countries, including Association for Progressive Communications (APC) staff members, came together in Muldersdrift, South Africa, to discuss “Making a Feminist Internet: Movement building in a digital age in Africa.” The purpose of the convening, abbreviated as #MFIAfrica, was to deepen the understanding of how the digital landscape has affected feminist, women’s rights, sexual rights and intersectional movement-building work; strengthen the capacity of feminist, women’s rights, sexual rights and digital security activists to respond to emerg

The lockdown raises questions around digital security and safety. From online conferences being hacked to individual women tarteted for extortion, there is a lot happening. In this personal essay, one woman navigates sextortion through expression, art and fantasy.

In the second part of their article, Loreto Bravo and Peter Bloom alert us to the dangers of a romanticization of technologies and develop a psychosocial and feminist approach as a tool to face the new wave of hyperconnectivity that is announced with 5G.