Feminist reflections on internet policies

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What do women’s rights have to do with the SDGs and the Internet?

Mar, 08/01/2017 - 05:31

The sustainable development goals explicitly mention gender equality, yet how will this be achieved and how is this linked to the potentially transformative role that ICTs could play. If the SDGs are going to use ICTs as a vehicle to achieve the goals then we need to use an intersectional and multi-pronged approach to ensure that women, girls and other marginalized groups are not left behind.

Short answer, everything

I recently attended the Sri Lankan Internet Governance Forum (IGF) where I spoke on a panel that discussed the linkages between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Internet. My intervention was framed around two questions.

Technology and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been recognized as major drivers for achieving sustainable development and achieving targets across the SDGs. How are women and girls placed in this?

Feminist talk

Resisting Aadhaar, Resisting Islamophobia: A critical look at debates and litigation around Aadhaar

Mié, 07/19/2017 - 08:25

As the Supreme Court of India determines the contours of the right to privacy and who in Indian territory has it, Mythri Prasad-Aleyamma critiques many of the assumptions around the opposition to Aadhar. This critique is grounded in the differences of how surveillance and privacy are known and experienced by those who are vulnerable for varied reasons, but especially those who are migrants, Muslim or of lowered castes.

Queing up for Aadhar. Image source: By Biswarup Ganguly, 2012 from Wikimedia Commons. CC license Attribution.

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[COLUMN] Access and beyond: Gendered barriers to internet use

Vie, 07/14/2017 - 08:53

Gendered barriers to internet access can range from social and cultural barriers imposed within family or by partners to extraneous factors relevant to all - such as affordability of data and devices. In this column Chenai Chair examines the specificity of how access is different for women and men.

Image source: author

Connecting the next billion, is rightly so, an important issue in ensuring everyone has the choice to access the internet. Women, and in particular those with low levels of income and education, are more likely to be the unconnected. However, gaining access is one thing, but what are the challenges that limit men and women’s experience of the internet and present a barrier to access? In this penultimate article reflecting on the finding from Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Rwanda, we look at the gendered barriers to internet access and use.

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[COLUMN] How women in the Global South are RECLAIMING SOCIAL MEDIA to promote body positivity

Mar, 07/11/2017 - 09:54

In this column, Samukelisiwe explores how women in the global South have started using social media to make up for the lack of representation of black and brown women in mainstream media. Women of colour, people with disability, gender non conforming persons and others now use the internet to explore their image and their body, and form communities that celebrate different ways of being.

Image sources: Photograph(left) by Amanda Hirsch; Photograph(right) by Nicole Marie Edine. Licensed under CC Attribution

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Framing access and power at Stockholm Internet Forum 2017

Jue, 06/22/2017 - 10:46

The Stockholm Internet Forum 2017 focused their discussions on the links between access and power. In this article Shaikh Rafia Sarwar examines how access is linked to women's empowerment and particularly their economic empowerment. And whether the debate around access should focus on economic, cultural and social empowerment of women through and outside technology, rather than ensuring access to devices and internet via civil society projects.

Photo taken by author at SIF 2017

Hundreds of activists, advocates, journalists, researchers, donors, and just about everyone else converged into the second-largest archipelago in the Baltic Sea – the city of Stockholm – to discuss powe“r and access online. 10PM sun aside, this year’s Stockholm Internet Forum (#SIF17) for easy tracking of the event on Twitter) was stronger than ever before and saw its participants and panelists talk about some real hard and somewhat depressing questions.

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[COLUMN] Access and Beyond: Navigating mobile costs in communication

Jue, 06/15/2017 - 16:38

Africa is flooded with zero rating services such as Free Basics (Facebook’s zero rating scheme) and other subsidised data strategies. Do these schemes make internet more affordable and bring access to more people? In this column Chenai Chair examines whether ordinary people perceive such schemes as useful.

Photograph by Omaranabulsi under CC BY-SA 3.0 license

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IGF Best practice forum on Gender and Access (2016): Overcoming barriers to enable women's meaningful internet access

Mar, 06/13/2017 - 09:59

This is the final output resource produced by a community of participants in IGF best practice forum (BPF) on gender and access in 2016. This is also the second resource produced by the IGF BPF on Gender, which in 2015 published an extensive resource on online abuse and gender-based violence. The BPF Gender’s outputs are considered living resources that will be updated and changed as additional input and comments are received.

[COLUMN] How women in the global south are RECLAIMING SOCIAL MEDIA to combat femicide

Jue, 06/08/2017 - 11:11

In this new column on reclaiming social media for addressing women's issues and feminist concerns, Samukelisiwe Mabaso begins by looking at the rising rates of femicide in South Africa (and other parts of the world). Various spontaneous movements led and powered by women have arisen and use technology and social media to amplify their voices and ensure their demands are met.

In May 2017, countless South African women took to Twitter and Facebook to share their harrowing experiences of abuse under the hashtag #MenAreTrash. The outpour of tweets and Facebook posts was sparked by the murder of Karabo Mokoena, a 22-year-old woman who was allegedly killed and burned by her boyfriend. Although the wording of #MenAreTrash has caused controversy, that will not be the focal point of this column.

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Tackling the gender digital divide in Africa

Jue, 06/01/2017 - 08:49

The coming of the digital age and of information technology promises that those 'left out' or excluded from development will be to access their rights and enjoy a higher standard of living. But what is the truth for African women - are the experiences of all 'marginal' women being lumped together and how far away is the promise of equal access and gender equity.

Republished from author’s blog Koliwe Majama

The emergence of the internet is touted as an opportunity for women in Africa to ‘play catch up’ after years of being ‘left out’ in the mainstream media.

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Gendering Surveillance

Mar, 05/23/2017 - 10:35

With our work on Gendering Surveillance, the Internet Democracy Project hopes to make more concrete the multifaceted ways in which widespread surveillance shapes, and harms, our lives.

At the time of writing this, we start with presenting you with three case studies on this site, examining the intersection of gender and surveillance in a variety of situations. Over time, we hope to further add to these.

[COLUMN] Access and Beyond: Motivations for internet use

Jue, 05/11/2017 - 08:32

In this column, Chenai Chair explores motivations of internet use through the ResearchICT Africa study in Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. Business, local and global communication, social ties, and curiosity seem to be the main motivators. By understanding why people go online, we can better shape interventions for a connected society.

Field picture taken from 2011 survey: Source Research ICT Africa.

Do you remember why you went online for the first time in your life? This is my favourite question that you may not have yet thought about – but it reflects the starting point in becoming a netizen.

This is the second in the series of columns on Access and Beyond that chronicles the research conducted by Research ICT Africa in Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa and Nigeria. In this column I focus on motivations for internet use.

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Technology-mediated Violence against Women in India: Discussion paper

Mar, 05/09/2017 - 08:33

Archival image(1978) of women’s protest against rape laws outside Supreme Court of India

Technology-mediated Violence against Women in India:
How can we strengthen existing legal-institutional response mechanisms?

A discussion paper from IT for Change
January 2017

In January 2017, IT for Change initiated work in the area of forging an effective legal-institutional response to technology-mediated violence against women in India, with support from the WWW Foundation.

Did Facebook finally figure out that consent is more important than nipples?

Mié, 05/03/2017 - 10:57

In April 2017 Facebook announced a new tool that will prevent an intimate image posted without consent from being shared further on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. Erika Smith and Fungai Machirori go deep and debate the pros and cons of this proposed system, and how feminist-friendly and positive about alternate sexualities it is.

Republished from Take Back the Tech!

When you receive calls at all hours from women desperate to get intimate photos shared without consent taken offline, it’s a relief to hear about Facebook’s latest move to address the distribution of non-consensual intimate images. Finally!

Co-author: Fungai Machirori

Working out access on our own: Community projects, gender and internet

Mar, 05/02/2017 - 00:00

As our cities turn smart and countries turn digital the gender gap in terms of internet access is disturbing. The lack of access directly relates to the loss of rights of women and minorities. Sadly there is a long way to go before we close this gap. Chinmayi S K explores projects that attempted in innovative ways to address the digital gender gap online.

Image from Rights Con Brussels 2017 website

Wikipedia describes internet access as “the process that enables individuals and organisations to connect to the internet using computer terminals, computers, mobile devices, sometimes via computer networks“.

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A place for all: On being diverse and inclusive @RightsCon

Vie, 04/28/2017 - 10:27

More than 1,500 business leaders, civil society advocates, policy makers, lawyers, bloggers, technologists, and users participated in RightsCon Brussels 2017 (March) and there were over 250 sessions related to human rights and technology. Serene Lim explores the ways in which inequity was addressed at the forum, and how exclusion and marginalisation were framed in various sessions.

Image from original work ‘Web Women Want’ by Willow Brugh. Licensed under cc-by-sa-2.0.

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The internet of Things: smart devices, quantified self, dolls and vibrators

Jue, 04/27/2017 - 10:28

If an object has a chip, it becomes smart, and by extension our houses become smarter - and so do our cities, hospitals, toys, phones. But what about the inventors, the creators, the owners, the users of all these smart and tiny things - are we becoming smarter? Reflecting on sessions in Rights Con 2017 in Brussels, Vale examines the ways in which the internet of things can lead to invasive datafication and surveillance, and violate internet rights.

Image by Namita Aavriti, courtesy Cayla the hackable doll

If an object has a chip, it becomes smart, and by extension our houses become smarter – and so do our cities, hospitals, toys, phones. But what about the inventors, the creators, the owners, the users of all these smart and tiny things – are we becoming smarter?

I am fascinated by the ubiquitous ability of internet technologies to animate things, transform them into hubs, bypass walls and diminish distances.

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10 ways to make Twitter work for feminist activism

Mar, 04/25/2017 - 13:25

How to bring the powerful agency and discourse of women's rights movements and feminism to the digital age of Twitter and other social media. Samukelisiwe Mabaso has researched on various movements across Africa and Asia that successfully and effectively use technology, and shows us ten ways in which to make Twitter work for feminist activism. Lets get in formation!

Audre Lorde. Image source

I decided to do a little exercise, I typed #feminism in Twitter’s search bar and the top tweet that came up was this comic that immediately spoke to me.

!{width:400px}http://www.genderit.org/sites/default/upload/brown_paperbag_comic.jpg((Screenshot by author.

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[COLUMN] Open software movements, open content, free culture: Where are the women?

Mar, 04/18/2017 - 11:31

The gender balance is far from equal even in progressive movements such as the free and open source software community, Mozilla user groups, and others. Despite all the rivers of ink that were written about the gender imbalance in these areas, the changes are slow to arrive.

In 2011 a study by GroupLens revealed the gender imbalance on Wikipedia, and there was an outpouring of articles in the global media about the notorious absence of women in the world’s largest virtual encyclopedia. At that point the Wikimedia Foundation set in motion an ambitious plan to try to incorporate more women. Above all, user groups appeared, making it their business to get more women involved as their main goal.

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[COLUMN] I want to be a Pokémon master

Jue, 04/13/2017 - 10:18

Pokémon exploded as a game that could be played on mobile phones in 2016. Of the many debates around it, Angélica Contreras explores the gendered aspect of videogames and how Pokémon struck a chord with many women in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and parts of Latin America. This article was originally written in Spanish, and is part of a column series that explores young women and their lives immersed in technology.

Image shared by author

This article is part of a series of GenderIT.org columns, and here we feature translations from Spanish. Evelin Heidel from Argentina will share her experiences in gender, technology, programming and access; and Angelica Contreras from Mexico will write about young women and their lives immersed in technology.

I am AkiConterR and my companion is a “Pidgeotto” who I call “Pid”. I belong to Team Mystic; I am on level 7 and I have 53 Pokémons (72, actually, but some of them I transferred).

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[COLUMN] Access and beyond: Navigating the gendered cyberspace

Mié, 04/12/2017 - 10:18

In this column series, Chenai Chair explores the barriers to accessing the internet in four countries in Africa - Rwanda, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya. The study in particular looks at the impact of affordability of internet and subsidised data services, and what impact this has on people in different locations (countries, urban-rural), of different genders, and so on. In the first column, Chenai examines what kind of methodology is suited for research on access.

A world map colored to show the level of Internet penetration (number of Internet users as a percentage of a country’s population). Updated June 2013. Source: Wikipedia

Affordability is one of the primary barriers to internet access, and particularly to optimal use. Knowing this fully from our previous research, Research ICT Africa (RIA) conducted focus groups in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Rwanda in November 2016.

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