Zimbabwe

The emerging sub-field of research around gender and digital technology is united in its understanding that gender biases and stereotypes are embedded in technology, and that this reproduces the existing problems around gender parity, gender-based violence, discrimination and exclusion on the internet. This report is a mapping of the research around gender and digital technology in the decade…

Miami Chirilele writes about how Murambinda Works, a community network in North Buhera, Zimbabwe, has been able to connect 108,000 people, and is hacking the crisis bottom-up.

In this article, the Zimbabwean feminist researcher and writer Fungai Machirori challenges the idea of "the global South" as a homogenous space.

Politicians, journalists and other women with public profiles face a substantial share of online harassment, bullying and violence. In this article, Koliwe Majama shows how in the context of the Zimbabwean elections, even as the internet brings the public closer to politicians, it opens up new avenues for discrediting them and their work, and reveals the patriarchal misogyny that underlies…

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.

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?

In this interview with Maggie Mapondera, she unpacks movement-building and the role of ICTs. Movements are built around shared stories and passions, and ICTs are one aspect of how momentum is built and sustained around a cause. Here Maggie Mapondera shows how women's stories are powerful and can potentially change the world, but we must listen with care and integrity.

In July 2017, an eclectic and vibrant group got together in Harare, Zimbabwe, including feminists in journalism, visual art, internet rights activism, digital security, movement building, as well as sex and sexuality rights activism. These are their reflections on the feminist principles of the internet and their value in their own context.

The coming of the digital age and of information technology promises that those 'left out' or excluded from development will be to access their rights and enjoy a higher standard of living. But what is the truth for African women - are the experiences of all 'marginal' women being lumped together and how far away is the promise of equal access and gender equity.