take back the tech!

Jointly with the Take Back the Tech! campaign, GenderIT.org is taking part in a Twitter blast to contribute to put tech-related violence against women and girls on the table at the CSW57.

Violence against women (VAW) that is mediated by technology is increasingly becoming part of women's experience of violence and their online interactions. In the same way we face risks offline, in the streets and in our homes, women and girls can face specific dangers and risks on the internet such as online harassment, cyberstalking, privacy invasions with the threat of blackmail, viral 'rape…

It was a bit like ping-pong - reporters, activists, and representatives from civil society organisations in a hot debate on privacy in Facebook. Some pointed out how Facebook (FB) from its inception is designed to encourage giving up your innermost secrets – or at least your relationship status. That privacy configurations change frequently on FB and it's hard to keep up or understand the…

The "Digital World 2012 - Knowledge to Prosperity conference":http://www.digitalworld.org.bd in Dhaka, Bangladesh 6-8 December was an amazing mashup of private sector, government, education, and civil society united in their interest in ICT for development. As coordinator of APC's "End violence: Women's rights and safety online project":…

‘She's begging to be raped.’ That's the response that many feminists in Pakistan get online from Pakistani men seeking to shut them up. This is a response from Pakistani men to women merely tweeting about issues related to sexualised violence.

This article, written by Florencia Flores Iborra for GenderIT.org, analyses some current cultural practices on some of the more popular online social networks, and the ways in which the publication policies of these platforms support or restrict the proliferation of certain behaviors relating to respect for the rights of women on the internet.

The 2012 "Take Back the Tech! campaign":https://www.takebackthetech.net/, a collaborative campaign that takes place annually during the "16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence":http://16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu/, featured 16 stories for 16 days. Each of these stories presented a different way how…

This selection of tweets circulated during the 2012 Take Back the Tech! campaign spotlights some of the key issues addressed during the 16 Days as well as relevant and provocative resources regarding violence against women and technologies.

As I write, our online campaign: "respect online, respect offline" which, for 16 days, highlighted violence against women and girls in line with the campaign Take Back the Tech! inviting women and girls to use ICT to denounce violence, has just come to an end. But I realize that our campaign has been disrupted by the violence in my country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, even though it has not…

Online harassment has become incredibly common for women around the world. Perpetrators of this violence act without fear of recourse, as anonymity protects them, and law does not limit their hate speech. Many women leave the online world out of fear that this violence will affect them in the offline world. But there are strategies that exist for women online activists to use to protect…