gender
1. Preamble The 13th annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the UN’s most significant multistakeholder platform for discussing internet governance, is taking place in Paris, France from 12 to 14 November 2018. At a time when trust in digital technologies seems to be declining with every data breach, misinformation campaign and revelation of surveillance, the overall theme of IGF 2018 – “Internet of Trust” – is quite timely. This year’s IGF is taking place place alongside the Pari...
As an organisation that has worked at the intersections of women’s rights, sexual rights and technology for more than two decades, APC welcomes the focus of the Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy on “gender perspectives on privacy”. The privacy violations that women and LGBTIQ persons experience take place within a context of existing structural inequalities and discrimination which put them at particular risk of violence and other types of human rights violations. It is importa...
Since the beginning of time, formulas, potions, rituals and prayers, stories and musical notes have tried to grasp the vastness of life. Each one of us depicts our own world, trying to find meaning, day after day. Amidst an overwhelming ocean of stimuli, we barely filter some micro-drops that we begin to relate to as events. We categorise, attribute emotions, judge, make decisions... According ...
In 2012, the multinational supermarket chain Target sent targeted advertisements for maternity products to women, none of whom had disclosed to the supermarket that they were pregnant. This targeting was based on the volunteered and behavourial data of its customers with regard to 25 products, which enabled Target to assign its customers an automated “pregnancy prediction” algorithmic score...
This member story was featured in the 2017 APC Annual Report, as part of our work on a feminist internet. In August 2017, Point of View launched the publication Skin Stories, which is a weekly essay series of narratives on sexuality, disability and gender. The origins of the publication lie in a nameless blog on Point of View's website sexualityanddisability.org, which only had one writer for a...
In the preceding three columns of this monthly series we introduced the way the Local Access Network project brings a feminist perspective to advocating for community networks in the global South, and highlighted the low representation of women in the regulatory and policy space and in regional and global movements. One of the Local Access Network project’s four activities is 'case studies an...
Community networks offer a means by which remote communities that are currently disconnected can organise in order to develop local solutions that allow them to access the internet. However, within such networks the gender gap is ever present. And it is on these two areas, community networks and the gender gap in technology, that grants have been focused by the Regional Fund for Digital Innovat...
The international consultation spaces are being used to advocate and push for complementary approaches to internet provision to the dominant paradigm of mobile operators meeting this need. Community networks (CNs) are being rationalised and grouped as the latest of social movements, where a group of committed institutions and individuals are collectively working towards alternative telecom mech...
Women, no matter which region, field or context they are in, are no strangers to self-censorship. The social constructs of "good women" globally encourage submissive, compromising behaviour from women, and self-censorship, especially in matters of importance, is generally encouraged. Pakistani women are no different. Censoring themselves, especially if their opinions are dissenting from th...
Targeting "the gap" between women and men in access to the internet is fundamental in reaching the goal of access for all. In an article for the Alliance for Affordable internet, the Web Foundation argues that the indicator of this gap should be calculated relative to a women-centred reference when the intention is to focus on the disparity and disadvantages faced by women. Gender internet...
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2018
Unless otherwise stated, content on the APC website is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)