Feminist reflections on internet policies

In this last column by Chenai Chair following the gender implications of the research by Research ICT Africa on access, she explores how researchers and activists can proactively explore gender dimensions. Even as ITU figures point to a progressively increasing gender digital divide, there are steps to take to understand and address this divide.

Image Source: Research ICT Africa. Photograph by C Stork. Location: Mozambique surveys

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What began as a small fundraising drive in July 2017 for Kéfir, a feminist libre tech co-op, has transformed into exploring the importance of feminist infrastructure in Latin America. This is an ongoing conversation between Erika Smith, from Take Back the Tech and APC-WRP with members of the collective Kéfir on infrastructure and the internet, labour in movements, and how to set up new collectives that have to exist within and with economic, social and political hegemonies.

What began as a small fundraising drive in July 2017 or Kéfir, a feminist libre tech co-op, has transformed into exploring the importance of feminist infrastructure in Latin America. Tune into this ongoing conversation we will be nurturing here in the near future.

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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.

1. 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?




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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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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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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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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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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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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.

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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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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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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.

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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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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.

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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

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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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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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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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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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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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