From 25 Nov to 10 Dec, Take Back The Tech! calls on women and men to take control of technology to protect the right to freedom of expression and information. Since it began in 2006, campaigners in more than 30 countries have used the internet, mobile phones, radio and more to document and fight violence against women.


This year, Take Back The Tech! calls for action to defend our right freedom of expression and information – the basic building blocks for us to be able to come together, organise for change, inform public debate, define culture, build safe spaces and end violence against women.


Take action! Take Back The Tech!

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(The featured articles and resources have been selected from a number of materials produced and collected on the right of freedom of expression and acts of violence, sexism and censorship by the GenderIT.org over the years. Find more resources on violence against women or communication rights in our archive.)

Finding a difficult balance: Human rights, law enforcement and cyber violence against women

Mavic Cabrera-…
GenderIT writer Mavic Cabrera-Balleza probed on new analytical frameworks of violence against women taking into account cyber violence and the challenges and dilemmas women activists confront as they struggle to address this relatively new dimension of gender injustice. She spoke with two women activists who are at the forefront of advocacy on violence against women at the national and international levels - Lesley Ann Foster, founder and Executive Director of Masimanye Women’s Support Network in South Africa and Charlotte Bunch, founder and Executive Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA.

We assume FOSS benefits all equally. But does it really?

c5
FOSS has the potential to change the way women relate with ICTs, allowing for more control over the tools they use. As Users, women will have the freedom from steep licensing fees and the opportunity to influence software development to meet their needs. As developers, the open principle behind FOSS encourages a more collaborative environment, in which women may discover more freedom to create applications and solutions. However until women are recognised as equal partners, users and developers in FOSS, these potentials will remain at rest.

Democratic Republic of Congo: Letter from the world capital of rape

coordon
Francoise Mukuku reports from the world march of women against sexual violence that took place in October 2010 in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Special Rapporteur of the United Nations has named the Democratic Republic of Congo the "rape capital of the world," with 15,000 women raped in DRC only during last year. In her blog, Francoise also shares how information and communication technologies have helped to increase survivors' voices

Tools for Communication Rights in Malaysia

jac
Jac sm Kee speaks with one of the most vocal media and communication rights advocates in Malaysia, Sonia Randhawa, through an online messenger platform about motivations, communication technologies, rights, democracy, tactics and gender. Sonia currently sits as the Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ). Apart from conducting regular trainings on independent media and communications strategies, CIJ is also developing community radio programmes that innovatively combine “old” and “new” technologies – radio and the internet – through Radiq Radio.

‘Does your mother know?’ Agency, risk and morality in the online lives of young women in Mumbai

ManjimaBhattacharjya & itsallmaya
Manjima Bhattacharjya and Maya Ganesh, the India partner of the APC's EroTICs Project, open their input with the evocative lyrics of a Swedish pop group ABBA: “And I can chat with you baby / Flirt a little, maybe / But does your mother know that you’re out ?” This article is about middle-class women digital natives in Mumbai, the city with the highest internet use in India, and the initial impressions of their online lives as drawn from interviews and survey data gathered for the ongoing EroTICs research project.

How to look at censorship with a gender lens

HeikeJensen & analia
Heike Jensen and Sonia Randhawa, APC WRP members participating in a gender team of the OpenNet Initiative in Asia (ONI-Asia), talk about how censorship and gender interrelate. Since 2006, APC WRP has taken a closer look at internet censorship and surveillance practices from a gender perspective in order to develop a gender research framework for examining freedom of expression, security and privacy for ONI project partners in Asia, as well as future research initiatives that are looking into the area of content regulation. ONI-Asia is part of a larger OpenNet Initiative, a collaborative project that aims to investigate, expose and analyse internet filtering and surveillance practices.
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