Feminist reflections on internet policies

IT for Change held a consultation in 2017 on the various forms of gender based cyber violence that affects women in India. Here various researchers and speakers gathered to share their data, insight and questions on the kinds of online violence faced by women in different professions, strata and social locations - from vernacular journalists to students in colleges, rural and urban women. This article also looks at various legal mechanisms and solutions offered by the state and what could be the way to address online violence.

Detail of poster designed for conference by Syeda Tanzeela Husain, AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi for the National Dialogue on gender-based Cyber Violence.

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In this report back from AfChix TechWomen Summit 2018, Kazanka Comfort talks about the inclusion of young women in science and tehcnology programs in university, discussions around the possibilities offered by community networks to own and manage infrastructure by the people. In particular Kazanka looks at how women are affected by sectarian conflict and working with ICTs and training in difficult contexts.

Kazanka Comfort representing APC at AfChix 2018. All images sourced from author

Feminist talk

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The Second Cyberfeminist International: Decolonising the Internet took place on 15 March 2018, during the 13th edition of the World Social Forum held in Salvador, Brazil on 13-17 March.

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Sanitary Panels is a comic that explores aspects of gender and technology including discrimination faced by women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education and careers. Here is an ordinary scene at a coffee-shop.

Sanitary Panels is an ironic yet hard hitting series where social commentary masquerades as humour and makes us rethink many of our assumptions. This comic explores aspects of gender and technology including discrimination faced by women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education and careers.

Image description: Comic using stick figures

Feminist talk

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In this column on community networks and gender, the writers will explore how communities can provide and run their own internet infrastructure, the existing forms of community networks, the legal and policy environment in which they have to exist and what are the gender dynamics around these networks. The first column asks a fundamental question - what would be the costs of women NOT having access. And further how community networks allow for the re-imagining of many social relations around infrastructure.

Image source: Author

This monthly column series speaks to the research project: Local Access Networks: can the unconnected connect themselves?. This research explores the topic of self-managed infrastructure, from a community-run approach as well as opens up the understanding around community networks and their possible relationship with feminism and gender.

Feminist talk

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Does technology and modernity dismantle hierarchies of social exclusion, like casteist and skin colour based discrimination in India? This is the question that is examined in-depth in this article that looks at the experience of Dalit women dating through apps in the Indian context, the roles that they are expected to play and how caste continues to play a role in romantic and sexual relationships and in relation to savarna (dominant caste) women.

Detail of collage by Flavia Fascendini

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Sanitary Panels does a web comic series on gender and technology including discrimination faced by women in STEM education and careers. Here is a poster for yet another manel i.e. a panel with only male speakers on a topic on which many qualified women experts are there.

The participation of women in panels in conferences related to technology and science is often very low, and reduced to a tokenistic gesture. And many times women are relegated to panels where issues relevant to gender are discussed as if these are not relevant to men.

Feminist talk

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Interview with Y.K. Chang who has recently been appointed as the Personal Information Protection Commission in South Korea - one of the first few women from civil society to reach this position within government in the country and possibly the region. GenderIT interviewed her on her journey, her ambitions for her new position and what she sees as the grave problems regarding privacy and security especially for women.

Image source: Y.K.Chang

Interview with Y.K. Chang who has recently been appointed as the Personal Information Protection Commission in South Korea - one of the first few women from civil society to reach this position within government in the country and possibly the region. GenderIT interviewed her on her journey, her ambitions for her new position and what she sees as the grave problems regarding privacy and security especially for women.

Feminist talk

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In the final column on reclaiming social media for women's rights, gender justice and parity, Samukelisiwe looks at how girls and young women have fought for their rights in the global South; and how Gen X, Y and Z has redefined the use of the internet and is reshaping politics both online and onground.

Original image sourced from
Wikimedia commons

Feminist talk

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Sanitary Panels does a web comic series on gender and technology including discrimination faced by women in STEM education and careers. Here we show what happens when women in technology are singled out and interviewed.

You know what women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) say - We are waiting for the day that we are not so unique, and there are many of us in these fields.

Sanitary Panels does a web comic series on gender and technology including discrimination faced by women in STEM education and careers. Here we show what happens when women in technology are singled out and interviewed.

Image description
How to interview women in STEM

Feminist talk

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Community networks offer an alternative to how connectivity, especially in remote areas, is largely determined by the market or state infrastructure. In this article Tigist Hussen explores the place of gender and feminist analysis in community networks, and specifically in the Zenzeleni network in Mankosi, South Africa. What she finds is surprising, humbling and insightful for researchers and practitioners working with local community networks.

Image sourced from website of Zenzeleni Networks. Licensed under CC attribution-noncommercial-sharealike

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In the field of research around gender and ICTs, there is particular attention required to the question of research methodology. How do women use ICTs, what do they need them for, what is the power dynamics around access and distribution? In this specific research project around potential use of ICTs, Catalina Alzate shows how participatory action research, design and creativity can be pulled together to enrich and deepen the process of research.

Image sourced from author. Visualisation of daily routines as part of interaction design process in research.

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The EROTICS report 2017 looks at sexuality, sexual rights and communication rights in South Asia in particular, and in this introduction to the report, hvale explores the conceptual overlaps and connecting threads in these varied contexts. South Asia's troubled colonial legacy of tackling sexuality related issues is evident in the many violations of rights of LGBTQI people, and the introduction looks at the importance of the internet in building connections and community, but also as a space of violence.

In plain sight, on sexuality, rights and the internet in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka

A feminist framework at the intersection of Internet with sexuality and rights

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In the digital economy, what needs to be further examined and understood is how women, gender non-conforming and other vulnerable groups are impacted. Becky Faith proposes a framework of feminist digital economics to unpack the ways in which gendered labour could be unpaid or not adequately compensated in the current context, and also how ‘the future of work’ including automation and machine-learning would impact on women.

Collage by Flavia Fascendini

There is a prevalent discourse that technology empowers women and ‘technology triumphs over poverty’; this is reflected in Sustainable Development Goal 5.B, “Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women” (UN, 2017, 5.B). But it is as yet unclear what the balance is between our personal, sexual and economic empowerment, and our position as women embedded within networked digital economies.

Feminist talk

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Sanitary Panels does a web comic series on gender and technology including discrimination faced by women in STEM education and careers. Here are two comics on circles of complicity around sexual harassment and STEM careers for women.

Sanitary Panels does a web comic series on gender and technology including discrimination faced by women in STEM education and careers. Here are two comics on circles of complicity around sexual harassment and STEM careers for women.

Image description: One panel

Panel: Concentric circles.
Text in inner most circle: Sexual harassers and abusers.

Feminist talk

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This edition is an exploration of the multiple layers of the relationship between sexuality, rights and sexual expression and the internet. Does it open up new avenues and forums for expression, or does it expose people to more variations of the violence, abuse and harassment that we face onground/offline? And is this even a question to ask, since it is now inevitable that we are all embedded in technology, whether with or without our participation or consent.

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How the stories of movements for queer liberation are told is a historically complicated thing. What and who constitute the gay rights movement is a perennial question to which we know now clearly that there is no one answer. There is no homogenous ‘LGBT’ community in any country, nor is there a global homogenous ‘LGBT’ movement, with homogenous sets of values and agendas

There is no homogenous ‘LGBT’ community in any country, nor is there a global homogenous ‘LGBT’ movement, with homogenous sets of values and agendas.

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As part of the EROTICS research, the Women's Media Collective, Sri Lanka did research on 1) human rights of Sri Lanka lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer and 2) is on use of online space by lesbian women. In this interview by Shubha Kayastha, WMC talks about their process and recommendations.

Image source: Shubha Kayastha (sketch by participants in a sexuality workshop). Title: freedom of thought. Description: Art work showing different way in which one can access knowledge and enjoy sexual rights.

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Since 2013 the EROTICS global survey has been carried out three times by APC-WRP to assess and learn about the role of information and communication technologies in the work of its worldwide network of gender and sexuality activists, advocates, professionals and scholars. The survey was particularly designed to reflect about their experiences and responses to online violence and censorship. Here the lead researchers involved in the survey introduce the findings from the survey.

At three different times over the past four years, the EROTICS Project: An Exploratory Research on Sexuality and the Internet, by the APC Women’s Rights Program, sent out a questionnaire to its worldwide network of gender and sexuality activists, advocates, professionals and scholars, to learn about the role of information and communication technologies in their work. The survey was particularly designed to reflect about their experiences and responses to online violence and censorship.

Co-author:  Horacio Sivori

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LOOM is a Nepal-based feminist organisation that works towards harnessing the collective power of women through multi-generational activism especially around sexual rights and sexual citizenship. As part of the EROTICS project, LOOM has been part of two studies conducted on the internet and sexual expression and online gender based violence, and in this interview they share more about the research.

Photo of workshop conducted by LOOM in Nepal. Photo credit: LOOM

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