The digital divide is often only measured in technical terms like gaps in infrastructure, connectivity, or devices. But its political nature becomes evident in times of crisis, when floods cut through villages, or fires force communities to evacuate, or when storms disintegrate already fragile infrastructure, leading to making the ability to connect a matter of survival. Who can send a message to loved ones, access emergency services, share details of affected persons from the ground, or receive accurate information reflects long-standing inequalities about who has access to networks, devices and electricity as a privilege, and whose communication needs are treated as essential. In times of climate and environmental emergencies, connectivity ends up becoming a privilege that determines who can be heard and who can access safety quicker than others.
For many communities, especially women and LGBTQIA+ people who already navigate structural exclusion from technology and public infrastructure, these divides are intensified. Communication networks that are rarely neutral, mirror existing hierarchies of power, often leaving rural communities, informal settlements, Indigenous territories, and conflict-affected regions with fragile or absent connectivity. In these contexts, losing access to communication channels and the internet can mean being cut off from family, emergency responders, community organising, and life-saving information and services. It can mean not knowing where to go, who to trust, or how to find help. A feminist approach to the digital divide insists that these outcomes are not simply technological failures but consequences of political and economic choices.
At the same time, communities are not waiting passively for solutions from governments or corporations. Across regions, feminist technology movements are organising locally and collectively to respond to both environmental crises and the digital inequalities that shape them. They are building community networks, sharing resources, documenting lived realities, repairing devices for the sake of longevity and out of care for the climate, and in doing so they are imagining technologies rooted in care, autonomy, and collective survival.
In a way, it is an act of resistance. Challenging the systems that keep people disconnected means unsettling the political and economic dynamics that benefit from that disconnection. Around the world, communities are pushing back against a model of technological expansion driven by extraction, profit and control, like mining that is costing lives of thousands of people in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, data centres that strain water and energy systems, and platforms that concentrate power while silencing dissent. At the same time, many states seek to tighten their control on communication networks, restricting speech and access in order to maintain authority over people’s rights. Feminist movements and community-led grassroots initiatives remind us that another approach is possible that is rooted in organising collectively, sharing knowledge, and building technologies rooted in care, autonomy and solidarity, as they have the ability to disrupt the status quo and create space to imagine different digital futures. These are futures where connectivity is not a privilege reserved for a few, but a shared resource that supports communities on the frontlines of environmental harm and political exclusion to speak, organise and shape the worlds they deserve.
This edition brings together stories and reflections from those efforts. It asks what it means to reconnect technology with the needs of communities facing environmental upheaval, and how feminist approaches to technology can help reshape who gets to connect, communicate, and organise when it matters most.
Challenging the systems that keep people disconnected means unsettling the political and economic dynamics that benefit from that disconnection.
Jakki Lucero’s article reflects on how natural disasters in the Philippines expose the stark realities of digital inequality. Drawing on the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, the article shows how the collapse of communication infrastructure left entire communities struggling not only to survive the storm, but also to be seen by relief systems that increasingly depend on digital verification. In the absence of reliable connectivity, survivors improvised their own communication networks, turning churches, schools, and shared devices into hubs for information and survival. The piece also highlights how these digital divides are gendered in that women, already carrying the bulk of care work during and after disasters, often have less time, privacy, and access to devices, while informal workers lose both livelihoods and online presence when connectivity fails. As climate disasters intensify, Jakki argues, “After the storm, rebuilding is not only about roads and roofs. It is about restoring voice, agency, and connection. In a world where stories travel fast, ensuring marginalised voices are heard is central to imagining recovery itself.”
Pamilerin Samuel’s article highlights how feminist repair labs across the Global Majority are reclaiming technology as an act of care and resilience to adapt to the changing climate. Beginning with the realities of electronic waste sites like in Agbogbloshie in Ghana, the piece situates repair spaces as a grassroots response to a global tech economy built on extraction and environmental harm. In community halls and neighbourhood workshops across places like Accra, Bengaluru and Oaxaca, women and queer organisers are teaching communities how to maintain and repair everyday devices that sustain communication and livelihoods. Especially in regions where unstable electricity, climate shocks, and economic constraints cause devices to fail quickly, these spaces help keep critical tools like radios, solar lanterns, and routers functioning, enabling communities to coordinate and stay connected during crises. Rather than celebrating technological disruption, feminist repair labs centre collective knowledge, autonomy and environmental responsibility, establishing that repair can become both climate adaptation and political resistance to systems that treat both technology and communities as disposable. Pamilerin ends by saying, “Repair is radical, and it says that we’re not throwing each other away; we're not throwing our tools away; and we're staying put, and we're fixing what we can.”
Mardiya Siba Yahaya and Goldendean’s speculative story Making Space for the Unkind weaves grief, ecological destruction, technological collapse, and political resistance into a narrative that questions the systems sustaining both digital infrastructures and extractive economies. Beginning with the death of an artisanal miner in a “sacrifice zone”, the story follows two characters grappling with loss, misinformation, and the erasure of working-class lives that sustain the global tech economy through mining and resource extraction at the behest of resource greedy tech authoritarians. As communication systems fail and official narratives blame the victims, underground networks of artists and organisers known as the “Trouble Makers” intervene through street art, collective action, and alternative communication practices, imagining ways to reclaim technology and public space from corporate and state control. Blending fiction, political commentary, and artistic imagination, the piece reflects on how communities on the margins respond to ecological collapse, technological dependency, and extractive economies by building new forms of solidarity and resistance.
And finally, Melissa Maldonado-Salcedo’s article reflects on how feminist technologists are reimagining technology through what she calls “coding care” – an approach that places relationships, justice, and ecological responsibility at the centre of technological design and governance. Drawing on experiences ranging from student organising to global feminist tech movements, she traces four trajectories that illustrate how care becomes the foundation of alternative digital futures: movement-run infrastructure through May First Movement Technology, feminist hacker scholarship and permacomputing practices articulated by Stephanie Wuschitz, cooperative and community-run platforms built by the Latin American collective Sutty, and design justice oriented pedagogy shaped by emerging technologist Anusha Sankholkar. Across these examples, Melissa illustrates how feminist technologists are challenging extractive and exclusionary tech cultures by building infrastructures, learning spaces, and governance models that prioritise collective safety, accessibility, sustainability, and community autonomy.
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