women's rights

In the Gender and Internet Governance Exchange (gigX) workshop last month participants from different countries in Asia were asked to arrange a series of words by the “ladder of hierarchy”. Despite our cultural differences, it seemed that we all agreed on one thing – whether married or unmarried - man is always on top.

Since the mid 1980s, more Filipino women than men were leaving the country for various destinations abroad. How do we reach the women working overseas to extend our support to them online? How do we maximize online connectivity so that we can send and receive messages to help migrants?

To start off our series of gigX, APC in collaboration with the Foundation for Media Alternatives, held a 2-day event on the 29 and 30 June 2015 where advocates from the region came together to exchange knowledge on the intersections of women’s rights and internet governance.

In this article, GenderIT.org talks with Anita Gurumurthy from IT For Change about gender and privacy. Anita worked with Heike in the Gender and Citizenship in the Information Society research programme.

Despite Heike's pessimism about the internet as it is today and the ways in which it is developing, there is a deep-seated optimism about Heike's work. She recognised that patriarchy is oppressive not just to women, but to the majority of men as well, whether due to their poverty, the colour of their skin or their sexuality. By taking apart the structures of patriarchy, uncovering the power…

These reflections follow on from a personal recollection of Heike Jensen on the Global Internet Governance Academic Network blog. Here, Marianne Franklin focuses on one of Heike's later publications, a chapter for the 2013 edition of the Global Information Society Watch entitled “Whose internet is it anyway? Shaping the internet – feminist voices in governance decision making”.

Does social media enable forming networks of solidarity between different marginalised groups? Is there a space for non-normative discourses such as the discourse on pleasure? Does digital technology aid in the construction of feminist counter-publics? These are some of the questions explored in this paper. Power relations that operate through social media, including forms of gendered and…

It is exciting to be a part of this edition, and especially that it is 20 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action – a blueprint that brought energy and enthusiasm to the women’s movement. It enhanced the liveliness of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, and reaffirmed that “…

Is it still possible to imagine a debate on a feminist internet within the context of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)? This question has been resounding since the last session of the CSW took place in March 2015. We hope you find this GenderIT.org edition useful, with its analysis of what happened around Section J at the 59th session of the CSW, as well as what did not happen, and…

Welcome to the first in a series of seven mini-editions we’re putting together to highlight the project "End violence: Women’s rights and safety online". Each edition focuses on one country in which the research was conducted, and brings together articles, major findings, and interviews with the research teams. In this edition we look at Pakistan, where religious and cultural controls over women…