GenderIT.org feminist talk

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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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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.

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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.

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In 2017 the Independent Expert for Sexual Orientation and Gender Expression and the Yogyakarta +10 principles acknowledged the specific social, cultural, health and other issues that are faced by those who are gender non conforming, and non-binary. This article looks at the online lives of those who challenge, play with, question and disrupt the gender binary, and do more - who are visibly and obviously queer.

Image source: Second Life avatar of Nadika Nadja
THE QUEER SUBJECT AND VIOLENCE IN ONLINE AND OFFLINE SPACES

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In this interview with Ninka Khaindrava, she talks about the state of activism around women's rights, labour rights and sexuality in Georgia. Ninka attended the MFI meeting in Malaysia to learn more about activists and their experiences with security and online violence in other parts of the world.

Image source: Ninka Khaindrava. First women march against online violence and attacks against women in Georgia

Ninka Khaindrava works for Women's Gaze in Georgia as their communications person. Women's Gaze is also part of the FRIDA network for young women. Here is our interview with her on the work they do and the connections they seek with other people, organisations, women's movements across the world.

Namita Aavriti: Can you tell us about your context and the kind of work you do?

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Lulú Barrera(Luchadoras, Mexico) recorded a video of Srilata Batliwala (CREA, India) talking about movements, feminism, and disruption at the Making a Feminist Internet meeting in Malaysia in early October. This video and the short piece are to be read together as a dialogue between Srilatha Batliwala and “Primavera Violeta”.

How does technology impact in our feminist movements? from APC on Vimeo.

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Sanitary Panels is ironic yet hard hitting, where social commentary masquerades as a web comic and makes us rethink many of our assumptions. Here the comic explores aspects of gender and technology including discrimination faced by women in STEM education and careers.

Sanitary Panels is ironic yet hard hitting. Here social commentary masquerades as a web comic 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

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The future of work in a digital economy could vary enormously depending for different people depending on where they live, who they work for or in what industry, and what access to privilege and resources they have. Dr. Becky Faith in this article examines the particular impact that automation and AI might have on gendered, precarious and often poorly paid labour that women usually are engaged in across the world, but especially in developing countries.

Article republished from Institute of Development Studies.
Insights from the AI Summit, London

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Womxn in global south are making revolutionary uses of social media, and this includes people challenging casual and everyday ableism. In her column Samukelisiwe Mabaso looks at three amazing projects from different countries that are revolutionizing how disability is talked about - how they are changing language, discourse and perceptions

Genna & Felix by Kate Arthur. Image source: @katearthurartist

A university friend of mine was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) a few years ago and as a result of the disease is now disabled. Reading the posts she shares on social media about how she navigates the world as a disabled person has made me more aware of how disabled-unfriendly our world is. Whether intentionally or not, her posts on social media are helping shine a spotlight on disability. This inspired me to do some research into how other womxn in the Global South are doing the same.

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In this third article on the city conversation on feminist principles of the internet in Harare, Zimbabwe, Daphne Jena interviews Chido Musodza on their work around digital security, the need for security for the women’s movement and feminists, and also broadly their take on the feminist principles of the internet.

Picture of Chido Musodza doing a training. Image source: Daphne Jena, Chido Musodza

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In this article Anthea Taderera looks at the personal and political meaning and potentials of a feminist internet. What does it mean to imagine and create a black, African feminist space with room for archiving, theorising and engagement away/free from the surveillance and regulation of state and private parties alike?

Image from Max Pixel and Wikimedia commons

For the Harare City Conversation recently held, I was particularly invested in having a conversation about the internet, and Twitter in particular, as public space for organising and resisting, cognitive of the trajectory my online critiquing, writing and general feministing has taken over the last three years.

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In her third column, Samukelisiwe Mabaso explores how groups and people, artists and performers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual are using the internet and social media to spread messages about love, diversity, and acceptance. This includes projects like Coalition for African Lesbians, Gaysi, Ahwaa and others.

Image source: To Revolutionary Type Love. Artist/source: Kawira Mwirichia

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In her third column, Samukelisiwe Mabaso explores how groups and people, artists and performers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual are using the internet and social media to spread messages about love, diversity, and acceptance. This includes projects like Coalition for African Lesbians, Gaysi, Ahwaa and others.

Image source: To Revolutionary Type Love. Artist/source: Kawira Mwirichia

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In this article, Serene Lim takes a closer look at how questions of access to the internet relate to the struggles of indigenous people and their movement for rights. Rather than the top-down imposition of connectivity, projects for access should align with their social context and as part of their right to sustainable development and right to equal participation.

There is no opting out. Internet connectivity and information technology are now embodied in our collective shared human condition, cutting across geographical boundaries and different spheres of our lives and identities. As governments move towards e-government, whether you like it or not, you are in a digital system of some kind or other even if you do not have access to the internet.

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