Feminist talk

What do women’s rights have to do with the SDGs and the Internet?

Posted Tue 1 Aug 2017 - 00:31 | 5,968 views
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.

Feminist talk

[COLUMN] How women in the Global South are RECLAIMING SOCIAL MEDIA to promote body positivity

Posted Tue 11 Jul 2017 - 04:54 | 7,967 views
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.

Publication

Gendering Surveillance

Posted Tue 23 May 2017 - 05:35 | 7,628 views

Surveillance powers of the state and corporations are escalating and are hugely assisted by information technology. Under regimes of colonialism and patriarchy, women, minorities and all other subjects have experienced being surveilled, enumerated and categorised. There is a need to now relook at how gender is implicated in surveillance practices in the contemporary. In this resource, Internet…

Feminist talk

[COLUMN] Access and Beyond (2): Motivations for internet use

Posted Thu 11 May 2017 - 03:32 | 6,858 views
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.

Publication

Technology-mediated Violence against Women in India: Discussion paper

Posted Tue 9 May 2017 - 03:33 | 6,660 views

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…

In depth

Did Facebook finally figure out that consent is more important than nipples?

Posted Wed 3 May 2017 - 05:57 | 6,854 views
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.

Feminist talk

A place for all: On being diverse and inclusive @RightsCon

Posted Fri 28 Apr 2017 - 05:27 | 5,498 views
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.

Feminist talk

[COLUMN] Open software movements, open content, free culture: Where are the women?

Posted Tue 18 Apr 2017 - 06:31 | 10,483 views
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.

Feminist talk

[COLUMN] I want to be a Pokémon master

Posted Thu 13 Apr 2017 - 05:18 | 4,157 views
Pokémon exploded as a game that could be played on mobile phones in 2016. Of the many debates around it, Angélica Contreras explores the gendered aspect of videogames and how Pokémon struck a chord with many women in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and parts of Latin America. This article was originally written in Spanish, and is part of a column series that explores young women and their lives…

Feminist talk

The nerdiest and most open of them all: Internet Freedom Festival 2017

Posted Fri 7 Apr 2017 - 03:51 | 4,247 views
The Internet Freedom Festival is refreshingly different from most forums around internet rights and technology - it is almost equal in gender ratio, welcoming of gender non conforming and trans persons, and takes privacy of its participants at the venue seriously. Smita Vanniyar tells us more about their experience at the festival this year in Valencia, Spain.