Most of us use technology everyday in myriad ways. If you are reading this right now, you are using technology. We use alarm clocks to wake up, we read the news online, some of our grandparents have heart monitors inside their bodies, CC TVs are installed on our walk homes, and our national ID cards may have our digital fingerprints! Within this context, technology can appear gender-neutral but in fact has always been shaped by the context of power in our societies. Feminists agree that our societies are not perfect – they are deeply patriarchal, heteronormative, white-supremacist and face many systemic inequalities. Technology, far from being neutral, is shaped by the societies that design it. From the notion that household appliances should be operated by women, that video games are for boys, that social media is for young people – all technology is shaped by existing gender, race, class, age and other intersecting social categories that shape power and privilege. 

While there is no singular understanding of feminist technology (in the same way there is no singular definition of “feminism”), critical questions feminists ask in the field of tech include: 

• Who is designing this technology? Who is it being designed for?
• Is this technology transparent?
• Does this technology empower diverse groups and voices? 
• Is this technology accessible for all?

The internet is an indispensable tool that allows us to learn, communicate, connect, organize, and build networks. The internet we have today, as a whole, is not a feminist space. Some spaces are built to be inclusive, while others are actively anti-rights, anti-feminist and target gender and sexual minorities. Being feminist in a contested space is an act of resistance. Feminist movements have played a valuable role in critically examining power and equity in the digital world.  They are concerned with issues of governance (What laws and policies, or lack thereof, regulate the internet? Who gets to make decisions about these laws?), access (Who is left out and why?), control (Is the internet democratic? Who is censored and who is amplified?), as well as belonging (Is the internet safe for all? Who faces discrimination?).

The digital rights organization Association for Progressive Communication (APC)’s Women’s Rights Program, defines a feminist internet as the following:

“A feminist internet works towards empowering more women and queer persons – in all our diversities – to fully enjoy our rights, engage in pleasure and play, and dismantle patriarchy. This integrates our different realities, contexts and specificities – including age, disabilities, sexualities, gender identities and expressions, socio-economic locations, political and religious beliefs, ethnic origins, and racial markers”. – Feminist Principles of the Internet

The Feminist Principles of the Internet (FPI) is a collaboratively and ongoing process to define feminist values for the internet. So far there are 17 principles covering many points of entry for feminist advocacy on digital rights. While these principles are not comprehensive, they serve as a useful guide to critically thinking about the internet from an intersectional and feminist lens.

There is a growing gap between those of us with access to technology and those without — that gap is popularly known as “the digital divide”. There are many barriers to access. For example, people in rural areas may be hindered by lack of infrastructure, lack of devices that support the internet, or expensive fees. Sometimes, the barrier to access can be social — like a language barrier, an imbalance of women’s representation in tech etc. The gender divide in tech tends to worsen in countries which experience more gender discrimination. The need to ensure that technology becomes an enabler for meaningful participation and leadership rather than a barrier is central to feminist tech.

The COVID19 pandemic has sped up the transition into the digital economy, while deepening the gendered digital divide, most impacting women and adolescent girls. In 2020, as nations went into lockdown, many schools adopted remote learning as an alternative. However, as reported by Unicef, ‘2.2 billion — or two-thirds of children and young people aged 25 years or less — do not have internet access at home’.

Community Networks, or self-organized internet infrastructure, are one of many ways that people are organizing to bridge the digital divide. Internet by the people, for the people can connect typically underserved communities (i.e.: indigenous, rural, refugee or tribal communities) which are considered less commercially profitable by governments, corporations and internet service providers. An advantage of self-organized infrastructure is that it can be designed to be open, free, neutral, often relying on shared values, resources, and shared management using bottom-up approaches. 

While community networks fill an important gap for marginalized communities, they also highlight structural inequalities perpetuated by the state, corporations and digital infrastructure actors. Community networks are local solutions but also point to the need for advocacy on universal access, especially in terms of the accountability of the state to fulfill access needs. The internet is a right and therefore the onus for universal access cannot be the sole burden of the most marginalized, but part of our political advocacy for accountability from our respective governments.

Read more about intentional feminist community networks at GenderIT.org.

.Data is information that is analysed or used to gain knowledge and make decisions. Some feminists have pointed out that the default state of experiencing the internet these days is surveillance. Data surveillance (sometimes called dataveillance) is a big business and critical to how corporations like Facebook and Google generate ad revenue and profit.

The right to privacy and data from a gender perspective is particularly important to consider in feminist technology. Collecting data of women and gender diverse people (and human rights organizations serving them) may pose risks as well as issues of agency and control over that data, loss of privacy, and discrimination and data bias. Data is often seen as “impartial” however when being used in relation to race, class, gender and other identity characteristics, data can easily fall into traps that perpetuate discrimination and inequality. Consider how social, institutional and cultural dynamics can skew the supposed objectivity and accuracy of data. In a world of diverse identities containing various genders and sexualities, how do we all fit into the neat and often “binary” boxes of data? What happens when this data is then used in decisions that affect us, like public health, welfare access, measuring participation, or to control and monitor groups?

Feminists identify data as a social justice issue. How do we collect data in a way that minimizes harm, protects sources, and requires full, fair and informed consent? What are the limits to what data can do? How do we prevent tech companies from harvesting data unethically or without consent? Author and educator Shoshana Zuboff chimes in: “Regulation,” she says, firmly. “This is what the tech companies fear most”.

“Digital surveillance is a feminist issue and a feminist study of surveillance is necessary to place those that face most discrimination at the centre of the discourse about digital privacy.” Lainie Yeoh

Read the blog on Surveillance and Feminism here.

If you’re an outspoken feminist on the internet, you may already be familiar with aspects of online gender-based violence (GBV or OGBV). For women who are public figures like politicians, journalists and celebrities, the added visibility typically results in more experiences of GBV. It is an unfortunate irony that visible online discussions on sexism and misogyny actually draw sexist and misogynistic responses!  There are “trolls” (people who exist to make life difficult for others, including the politically-left, often women, and especially feminists) online on every platform. Depending on individual platform policies (and how often or equally these policies are actually enforced), some sites are more effective petri dishes than others when it comes to breeding and glorifying toxic/violent behaviours. 

Being a target of an online harassment campaign is brutal!  A notorious example was #GamerGate in 2014 when organized trolls targetted several women, notably indie game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu, and feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian. Quinn was targeted due to her text-based game Depression Quest, which delved into the topic of depression through her personal experiences with the illness. Wu was targeted for speaking out against GamerGate. Sarkeesian was targetted because of her website/YouTube channel Feminist Frequency, providing sharp analysis of video games through a feminist lens.  The women were subject to a steady stream of insults, numerous rape and death threats, and doxxed (having previously private information like home addresses, workplaces, and phone numbers revealed online to further endanger the targets). Sarkeesian went on to found the Games and Online Harassment Hotline, a free hotline service to those in the US seeking support.

Another serious form of online GBV and harassment is the non-consensual dissemination of intimate images (NCII). Why such comparatively wieldy terminology when ‘revenge porn’ exists? ‘Revenge’ frames the problem as a lack of consent to dissemination, and suggests that the survivor bore some amount of responsibility for the perpetrator’s retaliatory actions. ‘Porn’ has a connotation of public consumption which leads those on the receiving end of NCII to then see it as material that is typically consumed and shared. This may not affirm the circumstances survivors consented to; agreeing to be in and share intimate pictures/videos is not the same as consenting to having the materials distributed as ‘porn’ for others. Since ‘revenge porn’ is problematic, we refer to it by what it actually is — non-consensual dissemination of intimate images.

Women, girls and gender diverse people experience OGBV in multiple ways from doxxing, NCII, stalking, surveillance, cyber bullying, and many more forms that breach people’s consent, privacy and freedom of expression. These forms of GBV, like offline forms of GBV, can have multiple impacts on survivors ranging from: social isolation (for example withdrawing from public life), economic loss (for example NCIIs causing someone to be fired), and self-censorship (for example, people who deplatform or leave online spaces all together due to bullying). 

For a more comprehensive overview of how GBV impacts women, girls and gender diverse people explore the following resources:

• APC’s Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women
• Plan International’s Free to Be Online? Campaign

Indigenous feminists have been fighting for climate justice, water, land and the rights to self-determination long before climate change was part of a global human rights agenda. The existence of alternate visions of “growth” and “development” have, in fact, existed in abundance in social movements, but little has been done to recognize these traditions, movements and practices in mainstream advocacy.

The world’s indigenous populations number over 300 million people spread across 70 countries. Despite mounting external pressures on their territories, resources, and way of life, such as climate change and globalisation, their rights in these and other areas remain largely unrecognised in international law. Their struggles and oppression remain unrepresented in formal advocacy spaces. 

The most glaring example is the impact of global heating/warming on indigenous Arctic communities, which is warming far faster than the rest of the planet and will face enormous climate impacts. Many indigenous communities, especially those living in remote areas who maintain close ties to the ecosystem through hunting, herding, foraging, and fishing, face disproportionate risks as a result. There are pronounced inequalities, land dispossession, and a lasting legacy of colonization shaping indigenous communities in the climate crisis. Indigeous youth and women however have led the way in challenging extractive and fossil fuel industries such as pipelines, mining, hydroelectric power plants and many more.

To read more about powerful feminist and indigenous-led movements for climate justice, check out some of the following networks, organizations and movements:

• MADRE https://www.madre.org/programs/advancing-climate-justice
• Global Green Grants https://www.greengrants.org/meettheactivists/indigenous-peoples/ 
• WECAN https://www.wecaninternational.org/

For an introduction to how colonialism re-drew the ecology and human labor based on extraction, deforestation, mining and other exploitative industries, take a look at some of the following articles.

• Earth Day: Colonialism’s role in the overexploitation of natural resources
• Overcoming the colonial development model of resource extraction for sustainable development in Africa
• Why climate justice is impossible without racial justice
• Watch the Feminist Action Lab’s Economic Justice Videos for more info on neoliberalism and gender!

When people think of policing the internet (making it ‘safer’), the conversation frequently steers towards ‘protecting‘ women and girls, and eradicating ‘harmful content’ like pornography. Feminist digital rights activists engage in these discussions and question narratives around “protection” that are often used as a way to undermine sexual rights, increase surveillance, censor or target feminist content producers, rather than enable safe and consenual sexuality online! 

Take anyone trying to set up educational resources on sexual health and reproductive rights, a field in feminism that is subject to much policing. Affirmative, consent-based and sexually diverse aproaches to sex and pleasure ARE part of SRHR and reproductive rights. Deliberately “vague” policies around moral policing, child protection and cyber law are routinely used to silence, target, stigmatize or deplatform organizations and feminist content creators because of their engagement in conversations around pleasure and SRHR.

It can be attractive to fantasize of a benevolent regulator intervening on our behalf to remove just the right amount of harmful content and leaving us with an internet paradise. The real world is messier. This is one of the reasons feminist tech activism is based on rights, and not risks. There are initiatives dedicated towards advocacy, mass mobilisation, research, education, calls for actions, and engagement — all centered around the many ways pleasure is sought, created, distributed, and controlled in online spaces. Here are some feminist projects that explore sexuality, identity, love and sex in a positive light:

• The two award-winning publications Skin Stories and Deep Dives. Skin Stories publishes ‘fresh, urgent narratives at the places where disability, sexuality and gender meet’. Deep Dives ‘specialises in longform journalism, personal narratives, and the occasional works of art, poetry and fiction’. Deep Dives has two collections: Sexing the Interwebs, featuring in-depth stories at the intersection of sex, gender and technology, and Bodies of Evidence, a series of longform essays on big data, bodies, gender and sexualiity.  Both initiatives are helmed by Point of View, a Mumbai-based non-profit.
• Agents of Ishq (based in Mumbai) is a multimedia project that aims to give sex and good name and wants to create many (many many) positive conversations on love, sex and desire. It also has a highly engaging Instagram account, full of informative posts delivered with a cheeky tone and colourful palette.
• EROTICS (short for Exploratory Research on ICTs and Sexuality) was ‘imagined as a medium to explore – primarily through research – the relationships between expression and exploration of sexuality, identity, desire, play, resistance and community and the internet.’

Cyber Sexy: rethinking pornography is a book authored by Richa Kaul Padte, exploring online sex cultures, the history of how porn came to be categorised, unpacking terms like ‘the male gaze’, the iconic pornographic cartoon character Savita Bhabhi, and more.

Are women and girls given the space to embrace technology and play with it? How do different body types and abilities experience the internet? Is access a privilege or a right where they are? Do they have data and devices to access the internet, and if they do, do they have the time to use it for work and leisure? Are websites designed to be inclusive? Online content by and for communities with disabilities tend to be the most accessible content available — this should not be the norm. Accessibility is the responsibility of all, and it should be a key part of how we organise. Learn to spot the biases of ableism (discrimination and prejudice against disabled persons), and interrogate our own practices. If you’re new to this, as many of us are, begin with listening and learning, and looking for ways to make accessibility integral to your activism — not an afterthought!

How can online spaces be made safe and inclusive for users with disabilities? When it comes to laying down the ground rules and policies, make sure persons with disabilities lead and participate in discussions, and their views are taken into account. 

The  World Wide Web Consortium (W3) develops standards to lead the web to its full potential, states that “Most of the basics of accessibility are fairly easy to implement”.  The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) further develops guidelines which are widely regarded as the international standard for web accessibility, and provides access to resources and research. 

The voices within the disabled communities are incredibly diverse, but this is not always reflected in our online spaces or storytelling. It is important for stories of disabled people to be told, and heard. Some examples include Disability Horizons, Voices of Disability , and The Disability Visibility Project.

In Malaysia, 18-year-old Veveonah Mosibin became a YouTube viral sensation when she uploaded a video documenting her adventure of building and staying in a tree house for 24 hours to gain better Wi-Fi for her university studies. 

Rather than addressing the digital divide issue surfaced by the pandemic, government leaders chose to accuse Veveonah of lying and seeking attention. The national embarrassment eventually caused the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and national telco provider Telekom Malaysia to upgrade the infrastructure in her village, Pitas — the first in the entire state of Sabah to have 300Mbps fibre optic connectivity, despite being a 3-hour-drive from the city centre. She was also offered a university scholarship, and the Prime Minister of Malaysia invited Mosibin and family to a dinner. The rest of the state remains in need of similar infrastructure upgrades. 

As we can see, sometimes the authorities responsible for infrastructure upgrades are not incentivised to do so until their hand is forced. Community networks are a way for the people to take matters into their own hands.

A global and collaborative movement for everyone, especially women and girls, to take control of technology and end violence against women. Coined after Take Back the Night marches where women reclaimed public streets, especially at night when it is supposed to be less safe for them, Take Back the Tech! (TBTT) has activity all year long, and the main highlight takes place during 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence (25 Nov – 10 Dec).

How do we reclaim technology for activism, transform unequal power relations, and harness the transformative potential of the internet? Take Back The Tech (TBTT) has some ideas, and more are always welcome. TBTT is a campaign with many ways to participate. You can host your own local initiative or campaign. It can be something fun, like creating, sending and receiving a ‘Feminist Forward’. Need some extra help being safe online? There’s the Safety Toolkit. Is your friend being harassed online? Here are some tips on how you can help. 

TBTT asks of women and girls to occupy spaces online, have fun, be creative, be witnesses and supporters to each other’s experiences, and amidst all the fun, to also get comfortable with learning about tech and taking things into their own hands.  If you have an idea you’ve been wanting to try out, enter the colourful world of TBTT campaigning. 

TBTT was initiated by APC’s Women’s Rights Programme in 2006 — a pioneer initiative, paying close attention to the link between ICT and VAW.

To ensure a feminist internet, we have to be able to envision such a space, and actively participate in setting the agenda and transforming internet governance. As a global public good, there are many visions of what the internet should be and who it should serve, and not all these ideas are feminist. This makes the participation of women and queer feminists more important in shaping the internet. While there are many ways of looking at internet governance, in 2003 and 2005, various stakeholder groups co-produced a working definition for internet governance in the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, revealed at the UN World Summit on Information Society (WSIS). 

A prominent space for stakeholders to discuss internet governance issues is at the Internet Governance Forum, an annual UN process with national, regional and international levels. While the gender balance in IGF has improved in recent years, it has a long way to go in achieving gender parity in  participation, and strengthening its conversations by bringing feminist and queers to discussion tables on policies and protocols. Between annual IGF sessions lies the interessional work, which is open to everyone interested in attending. This includes the Dynamic Coalition on Gender Equality, which advocates for gender and women’s diverse perspectives to be included in key internet governance debates. The Best Practice Forums collects good practices from community experiences to produce community-drive outputs. The Policy Networks aim to provide in-depth expert views on broad internet governance topics of global importance, and currently facilitates policy networks on Environment, and Meaningful Access. 

There are barriers to directly participating in the IGF — including the cost of physically attending, visa issues, or if your country is not recognised as a sovereign state by the UN (eg: Taiwan, which has a lively internet governance community and much knowledge to share on an international front). The national and regional IGF sessions (NRIs) that take place closest to you prior to the international level forum may be more accessible. They are not perfect, but they are an increasingly important space to hold these discussions.

The Beijing Declaration is a defining document addressing gender equality. In 1995 the Declaration was a result of over 30,000 activists globally coming together and advocating for the rights of women and girls during the Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing China. It produced ‘12 critical areas of concern’ and became a non-legally binding global policy platform for gender equality that continues to be active today. It wasn’t until over a decade later in 2016 that the UN Human Rights Council recognized internet access as a human rights issue. The HRC’s resolution affirmed that “the same rights people have offline must also be protected online. Today, digital rights has found more relevance in women’s rights and human rights conventions but there is a long road ahead. 

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is an annual conference and the official monitoring and implementation body on the Beijing Declaration, governed by UN Women. Though ground breaking, marginalized groups such as LGBTIQ groups, women with disabilities and sex workers were not included in the original drafting and negotiation process and have since been advocating to be included fully as constituencies for the realization of the commitments. 

Today, the 2021 Generation Equality Forum (GEF) hosted by the Governments of Mexico and France is a conference aiming to accelerate what was started in 1995. The GEF has 6 major “Action Coalitions” (AC) or a group of government, UN agency, private sector and civil society/feminist organizations leading a 5 year advocacy process on Technology and innovation for Gender Equality. Some key tools and the AC on Technology has provided so far include: 

1. A Blueprint for Action on Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality
2. A Global Acceleration Plan for Gender Equality that includes 4 “Game-Changing” Advocacy Targets on Technology

A Commitment Making Platform to track your government’s, private sector stakeholders and civil society commitments. This platform will also be a way for your organization to sign up as a commitment maker and engage in longer term advocacy with ACs.