women's rights

All sorts of members of the internet community got together for the 2014 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Istanbul from September 2-5. There were hundreds of workshops and meetings and side events, and even an entirely parallel Internet Ungovernance Forum, challenging the dominance of governments and corporations at the IGF.

On 1 September 2014, APC launched the “Feminist Principles of the Internet” at the Sexual Rights Pre-Event of the 2014 Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul, Turkey.

The following case summaries are excerpted from End violence against women: Country reports, which involve seven countries and are part of research commissioned by the Association for Progressive Communications Women's Rights Programme (APC WRP) beginning in 2013.

Over three days, the participants discussed and debated intersections of gender, sexuality, and the internet – not only as a tool – but as a new public space. In thinking through these issues, the participants at the meeting developed a set of *15 feminist principles of the internet*. These are designed to be an evolving document that informs our work on gender and technology, as well as…

“The neighbour resembling plastic-bag-recording Ricky in American Beauty, who takes surreptitious pictures of you while collecting the day’s post. That picture of me that I posted 7 years ago on MySpace that’s now doing the rounds on some misogynistic Reddit thread. That nanny cam set up to protect your 6-year-old niece whose footage ends up on a child porn site. For most women, Big Brother lives…

On the 23rd of June, I opened Facebook and found news that two friends had been arrested after participating in protests on the other side of the world. Natalie Lowrey is an Australian environmental activist who was arrested in Malaysia on 22 June during a peaceful action against Australian-owned Lynas Corporation's rare earth plant in Malaysia. Yara Sallam is an Egyptian feminist activist who…

Discourses on issues of safety are not new to feminists. Strategies to resist sexual harassment in the office, verbal abuse on the streets, physical violence in the home, shaming in social spaces and sexualised threats to women human rights defenders are continually being revisited and reworked. Often this abuse is about the silencing of women's voices and the marginalisation in social and…

During APC's Global Meeting on Gender, Sexuality and the Internet where we explored our collective understanding of what a feminist internet looks like, we asked participants to tell us their vision of a feminist internet.

This is the second in a series of posts reporting on the Global Meeting on Gender, Sexuality and the Internet held in Port Dickson, Malaysia from April 13 to 17, 2014, to envision a feminist internet and to evolve a framework for it. Around 50 activists working on gender rights, sexual rights and Internet rights in different parts of the world had come together for the meeting.

City-level Take Back the Tech! exchanges on strategic, creative use of tech for community-based solutions will bring together unusual suspects to share experiences and expertise in order to develop creative tech solutions to complicated issues of safety, spaces and gender. Support us by applauding this idea and help it make it to the challenge shortlist!