Resources

The purpose of this issue paper is to lay out the key legal, institutional and ethical issues concerning technology-mediated Violence against Women (VAW), to raise critical questions for further deliberation and action. This paper draws upon secondary literature in this area, and inputs from Indian feminist scholars and practitioners working in the domains of gender-based violence, women’s rights, digital rights, online violence

The introduction of OTT services that replace regular messaging applications in built into a phone, definitely has an impact on internet use. OTT services have become the main entry point to the Internet for most users in the prepaid mobile environment that characterises most African markets. This comparative country study, based on focus groups conducted in November 2016 in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa, sought to develop evidence of why people, use the Internet the way they do, specifically when their data is subsidised. The study is meant to inform policy making and especially discourse around internet rights.

Surveillance has historically functioned as an oppressive tool to control women’s bodies and is closely related to colonial modes of managing populations. Big data, metadata and the technologies used to collect, store and analyse them are by no means neutral, but come with their own exclusions and biases. This paper highlights the gendered and racialised effects of data practices; outlines the overlapping nature of state, commercial and peer surveillance; and maps the challenges and opportunities women and queers encounter on the nexus between data, surveillance, gender and sexuality.

What are the relationships and interdependencies influencing the promises of being online: voice, visibility, and power? This ARROW for Change (AFC) issue on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and the internet documents some of these dynamics.

In IGF 2015 gender report cards were completed for a total of 107 workshops – more than double the 51 regional workshops reported on in 2015. A summary and analysis of the discussion and comments are included here.

This study led by Digital Empowerment Foundation analyses 14 projects that are active in India in the arena of civic participation, education and health, and examines its impact on women stakeholders. One of the objectives is to understand how mobile phones are benefiting women frontline workers (teachers, auxiliary nurses) and mothers; however, the study's main findings are that accessibility and availability of local content are two major challenges of using ICTs among women.

A feminist internet works towards empowering more women and queer persons – in all our diversities – to fully enjoy our rights, engage in pleasure and play, and dismantle patriarchy. This integrates our different realities, contexts and specificities – including age, disabilities, sexualities, gender identities and expressions, socioeconomic locations, political and religious beliefs, ethnic origins, and racial markers. The following key principles are critical towards realising a feminist internet.

Acknowledging the differences in perceptions between genders, and between urban and rural dwellers, what must be realized is that these differences are often not unique to aspects related <br />to the mobile phone. The concerns, needs, and benefits ascribed to the mobile phone are more a reflection of people’s existing societal, familial, and gender norms prevalent in their environments, rather than having been elicited by the mobile phone. From the perception of the study participants, the phone is an enabler of extant human need and desire.

Conflicts over lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, similar to other social struggles, are increasingly materializing within technical functions of Internet governance and architecture rather than at the surface level of content.