Sonia Randhawa, genderIT.org writer and editor, compares the findings of four national reports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Pakistan and the Philippines undertaken by the APC WNSP as part of the project “Strengthening women’s strategic use of ICTs to combat violence against women and girls”.
As the international community prepares to join the United Nation’s 49th Session of the Commission on the Status on Women (CSW), women media practitioners are asking: where is women’s “J” spot? Commonly known as “Beijing +10,” the role of the official UN session is to evaluate what governments have done to implement the Platform for Action (PFA) of the Fourth World Conference on Women 10 years…
The purpose of this paper is to argue for the consideration of gender issues in all research on radio, convergence and development in Africa. It is intended to guide the deliberations at our Butare roundtable (September 2009) discussion on a research agenda and to ensure that we put gender considerations front and centre as we design our research plans.
Cristina Peralta examines the situation in Argentina, where few cases of VAW using ICTs have been denounced. One study found that a small percentage of young girls had been contacted by unknown people via chat or Facebook before disappearing. Cell phones are also used for controlling women's mobility and have become one of the first artifacts to be destroyed by the partner during violent…
Chim Manavy examines how growth of the internet is pushing the limits of a society's attitudes towards acceptable media images, through exploitative use of images taken for private consumption. Technology is moving across boundaries faster than the law can address. At the same time, ICT use in general, much less awareness of how ICTs can be strategically used to combat violence against women, is…
In this paper, Ingrid Leao, Thais Lapa and Tamara Amoroso discuss violence against women in the media, with advertisement and TV show examples. It also looks at civil society expectations for the first National Conference on Communications, to be held in December 2009. It examines the use of social networks like Orkut and Twitter; denouncements of VAW practices, such as cyber-bullying of teenage…
Lucy Niño and Lida Nuñez look at how the Colombian government has paid special attention to ICT policies, offering ICT literacy programmes and ICT inclusion in marginalised areas, while at the same time ICTs are used to promote prostitution and pornography produced in the country via the internet and cellphones. Government has produced a campaign to foster a “healthy use” of internet and to…
Jac SM Kee and Sonia Randhawa highlight forms of VAW that have received recognition in Malaysia and provide the context of ICT development and national policy objectives in this paper. It is not an exhaustive assessment of the current state of VAW, but rather aims to surface some of the interconnections between ICT issues and VAW and areas of potential opportunities for advocacy, as well as…