Association for Progressive Communications

In rural Latin America, women are fed up of hearing that they are “too old” to use computers. “ The lives of many women in Latin America have changed significantly in the past few decades. Rural women in their thirties have at least primary school education and know their rights thanks in many cases to community radio,” says APC’s Dafne Sabanes Plou. “They are ready for a place in today’s networked world.”

“With GEM I began to appreciate why sometimes the women that are part of our community resist the empowerment process. I used to be annoyed but now I understand that this is the product of years of conditioning and it will take some effort to reverse the trend. GEM helps you see the situation for what it is, so you can optimise your resources where you can make the maximum impact in creating change,” John Dada has been a GEM user since 2007 in rural Nigeria. GEM is an evaluation tool for determining whether ICTs are really improving or worsening women’s lives and for promoting positive change. GEM has been developed from the ground up, and has involved the collaboration of hundreds of community-based organisations and individuals since its first design in 2002.

As a consequence of our capacity-building work with hundreds of organisations and people from the women’s movement, we believe that we have helped to transform how the women’s movement thinks about technology and the internet, and that their confidence has been built to use technology more and more creatively to further women’s rights. “In the last five years, we have worked with many people and organisations,” says women’s programme coordinator Chat Garcia Ramilo. “What we have discovered is that this overall process of capacity building takes a long time, but if we persist long enough, we find out what changes it brings about.”

Is the cellular phone a tool for oppression or empowerment? An innovative new campaign by Girl’sNet, a daughter project of Women’sNet aims to ensure that the cell phones are are used to empower young South African women through positive self-expression.

The recent South African elections, held on April 22 2009, seem to be the most vibrant yet to grip the country. Political parties launched their manifestos and a striking issue was the absence of women’s concerns in the political parties’ agenda, in spite of the fact that women formed the majority of this years registered voters. This special edition newsletter on gender and politics by Women’sNet explores the question of women, gender and politics and will leave you wanting to read more…

Reports indicate that violence against women (VAW) is still very much present in today’s society – one out of three women worldwide suffers from some form of gender-based violence. As part of the global campaign on “Say NO to violence against women”, APC member the Open Institute in Cambodia conducted three forums on “Reclaiming ICT to end violence against women” held from September to December 2008. Through these forums, they were able to uncover key challenges in the use of ICTs to end violence against women, and put forth a series of pertinent recommendations to be implemented in Cambodia as part of the country’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Women in Africa may be accessing the internet, but are they getting the information they need? Whether they are students, members of civil society, leaders of indigenous communities or women and youth affected by HIV/AIDS, patents and copyrights are making it increasingly difficult for women in Africa to access the information they need. This edition of Gender Centred, a periodic bulletin produced by APC's programme for the GenderIT.org policy site, focuses on the challenges copyright and the lack of information exchange bring to those who need it most, and explores the different issues surrounding open source software, copyright and rights to information.

APC women’s Feminist Tech Exchange (FTX) is training a key group of women’s rights advocates particularly those living in the developing world in essential internet, audio and other technical skills to enable them to use technology to most effectively document abuses, build knowledge, disseminate information, mobilise support and amplify pressures for change.

The APC women’s programme looks at the current climate internationally regarding “harmful content” on the internet and explains the raison d’etre of their current exploration into the world of sexuality online.

In the recent years, APC’s francophone community has grown significantly, and with this growth also came an interest for Gender Evaluations Method (GEM) training in French. Requests for the workshop have not gone unheard, and the GEM Francophone Workshop, co-organised by the Women’s Networking Support Programme (WNSP), APC-Africa-Women (AAW) and Afriklinks officially began today in Bamako, Mali. The small group of fifteen people is comprised of participants from all over Africa, including two GenARDIS grantees. The workshop, which is coordinated and facilitated by APC’s Dafhne Plou and Sylvie Niombo, aims to build capacities in gender evaluation, integrating a GEM practice in Africa, and other challenges related to gender and ICTs in Africa. Additional information and impressions can be found on the Afriklinks webiste (in French).

APC member Open Institute in Cambodia was recently involved in a forum dedicated to ending violence against women. The “Women Forums on reclaiming ICTs to end violence against women” was held on December 26th and united over 120 individuals from the government and non-profit sector. Together, they discussed the vital role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in helping build awareness regarding violence against women.

Whether its through community radio, posters, sms, emails, audiocasts or websites, creative and informed use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) helps get the word out on violence against women (VAW). We have to know about technology to best use it for our activism, we have to understand it to protect ourselves and others, and to keep shaping an internet for all. From 25 November to 10 December it’s time once again to “Take Back the Tech!” and use ICTs to end violence against women.

Skill sharing sessions on wikis, web 2.0, a tech hunt, and webcasts marked the first day of the FTX (Feminist Tech eXchange) Hub as part of the Power of Movements forum, from November 14 – 17 2008 in Capetown. The FTX Hub is a place to put those skills into practice – and to share ideas around how critical communications rights are to women’s rights with over 2000 women attending this forum, organised by the Association for Women’s Rights and Development.

Seven women and thirteen men from Anglophone and Francophone Africa and the Caribbean met during the last days of September in Gorée Island, Senegal. They have many things in common, but one in particular is their ability to make innovative connections in gender, agriculture and information and communication technologies (ICTs). This ability has led them to be finalists of the Gender, Agricultural and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) small grants fund.

How can feminists use technology to their advantage? On November 10, the first ever Feminist Tech eXchange (FTX) in Cape Town will bring together more than 100 activists from around the globe to address this type of question. Organized by the APC Women’s programme in the run up to the massive women’s movement forum AWID, the capacity-building and information-exchange event will explore various technologies such as video, audio, social networking platforms and other emerging ICT tools. The event will act as an open space to network, share knowledge, and learn new skills and strategies for how to make technology work best for the women’s movement.

The Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) Small Grants Fund is delighted to announce that twenty projects have been short-listed as possible GenARDIS grantees. The short-listed proposals come from sixteen countries in Africa and the Caribbean, ranging from the Dominican Republic and St. Vincent on over the Atlantic Ocean to rock-skip throughout western Africa in Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Congo. Eastern Africa and Southern Africa also have their share of representation with projects from Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Read the entire announcement

This month, APC women’s GenderIT bulletin investigates online crime, cyberstalking, and asks how women are being affected. In “Finding a difficult balance – Human rights, law enforcement and cyber violence against women” Mavic Cabrera-Balleza speaks to activists from South Africa and the USA. Wieting Xu looks at cybercrime in India. Argentinian lawyer Carlos Gregorio argues that “Cybercrime laws are not enough, there is also a need for education”. And Ramata Soré discovers that in Burkina Faso women are the perpetrators as well as the victims of internet fraud.

On the 6th of August 2008, Dafne Plou, an APC facilitator on the Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) with telecentres, visited Uganda on a mission of evaluating how ICTs impact the community within gender lines.