And yes, a film inspired me to write this post…
Like any other Friday night and with no plans, my night was reduced to connecting to Netflix. It was easy to choose, I go to “recently added” and among twenty films I choose the one I will see tonight. Name: “Luckiest girl alive”. Voilà!
The film is based on a (fictional) novel with the same name. Yes, it is a sensitive film, yes, it is drama, and yes, it is feminist, very feminist.
The film raises the importance of speaking out about gender violence, a constant reality that many women face: the roles imposed by society, the microaggressions that women experience on the daily basis and the pressures to adapt to the patriarchal system, including the online. I could say that this film is an extension of the #Metoo movement…
(It is also important that this film raised another ugly reality: the mainstream feminism, topic that I’ll address in my next post…)
However, at the end of the film, my head fills with questions like:
What role do ICTs play in today’s feminism?
How do ICTs impact on women’s rights, issue the construction of a freer world for women or originate new forms of gender violence?
The typical image of feminist activism has been pretty clear historically: women marching down and protesting on the streets. Until now.
Whit the digital revolution transforming how humanity lives, works and relates with one another, the growth and uptake of information and communications technologies (ICTs) have the potential to improve access to information and services or enable collective action for social justice1.
Based on this and with the advancement of ICTs, online feminism, or cyberfeminism, was born in the 1990s as a movement that seeks to challenge power relations in a space determined by algorithms and binary codes. It is considered that no other form of activism in history has empowered so many individuals for the same singular issue.
In a world where the algorithms decide who is visible and who remains invisible, the practice of feminism is related above all to empowerment, the creation of networks and spaces for women with the intention of connecting them and making them visible from various fields2.
It’s a reality: the world of digital is heavily male-dominated1. An example of this issue, according to UN Women, women’s representation across political and economic leadership remains far from equal: At the international level, women hold just under 10 per cent of governmentally seats in 23 countries. This phenomenon not only happens in politics, careers in tech, construction, engineering and transport are dominated by men.
With these figures, it is evident that women still face difficulties when wanting to participate and raise their voice. It can be considered that ICTs promote a female image without power, without the capacity to transform their community reality, social or politically.
The presence of feminist issues has been increasing, in particular, the generalization of the gender approach. Feminists today use the ICTs to share their stories, raise awareness and organize collective actions.
This form of activism seeks to destabilize the system, and get it to turn towards an inclusive, collaborative and intersectional perspective, leaving behind the weaknesses of a network system based on a neocolonial patriarchy where, despite progress in terms of female participation, gender inequalities persist today.
Why is it important to get involved in ICT governance regarding issues of gender stereotypes?
As O’Donnell, A. & Sweetman, C. (2018) mention, there is also the risk this revolution will carve stark inequalities in terms of who benefits and whose voice is heard.
Although it could definitely be agreed that ICTs have many potentialities, it is necessary to know how to use them in terms of activism.
Because it is in the ICTs context where agendas are discussed, fed back and built. It’s is the only context where users have the opportunity to be able to count, see and observe the different edges of the same issue and it is important to feed these spaces with a feminist perspective that seeks to build inclusive spaces.
However, the reality is that despite advances in political-social matters, ICTs continue to reproduce gender stereotypes, associating different tasks and roles and placing women in roles that distance them from being prototypes of action or social change.
Therefore, it is in the context of the ICTs where gender stereotypes are built and reproduced, since they present facts and news about women’s leadership, reproducing visions related to domestic, family roles, private life3 and serving as a context for a feminized activism.
A critical view
What advantages and disadvantages do ICTs offer in terms of activism and feminist movements?, What areas of improvement can ICTs offer regarding this issue?
In general, ICTs favor the dissemination of information and awareness, and at the same time that it is a space to give and take voice, so the demands have an echo and, with this, promote female empowerment. Spaces such as the internet and social networks have revolutionized and become the most powerful form of activism and humanitarian action today.
In this context, the use of ICTs by feminist activism, referring to the internet and social networks, facilitates the mobilization of participation and the coordination of actions, as well as reduces the transaction costs associated with the organization of collective action.
Activist organizations use the internet and social media to increase the speed and regularity of their communication, thereby reducing the burden of distance. In addition, such speed can improve response times and help gather information. The ability to build support and mobilization is also possible within a shorter time frame by providing an easy conduit through which to notify activists of events. In short, activism can benefit from the use of ICTs by improving their ability to communicate effectively with greater speed, reduced costs and ease of interaction within an internationally dispersed network4.
To illustrate the widespread use of the Internet by female activists, J. Earl (2010) carried out a study on online and offline protest trends, analyzing the websites of different organizations in twenty thematic areas. Among the results, it can be seen that the political movements framed in the thematic dimension “women” present a higher level of online protest actions, around more than 80%, over topics like poverty, privacy and education.
An example of a feminist initiative performed only on an online basis is #VisibleWikiWomen, which was born from the lag of images and biographies of women on Internet, especially on the Wikimedia Commons site, popularly known as Wikipedia. The goal of this campaign in 2022 is to focus on including more photographs of black, brown and indigenous women.
However, social participation should not be confined to this type of spaces, ICTs, which means that we cannot depend solely on them. Entities that work directly with affected women in the offline sphere consider that although technology can enhance access to associations, personal contact with affected women and offline activism are essential.
Understanding that “likes” and becoming a “trending topic” do not achieve changes if offline feminism is not practiced. The use of ICTs promotes the return of a topic to a “trend”, but it is considered that better and greater changes are generated when online participation is combined with offline activism.
Campaigns including #Metoo have challenged sexual harassment, enabling women and girls to identify and call out abuse, seeking strength from the ‘power with’ generated through online communities. These campaigns have spread offline and many of them have used ‘traditional’ modes of activism in addition to online – for example, marches and press strategies to get media engagement 1.
Additionally, the lack of digital literacy and access to the Internet are considered by women as obstacles to access to activism and online feminist movements, as well as the age gap, as the majority of online feminist organizations and movements are aimed to young women, since they are considered to have a better use of technology. Therefore, it would be important to direct actions to allow the participation of older women in the ICTs.
Another disadvantage of using online ICTs for feminist purposes is that some users give themselves the luxury of anonymity, in order to violate gender rights. According to the European Institute for Gender Equality, among the main forms of cyber violence as a form of gender-based violence can be found: cyber harassment, cyber stalking and non-consensual pornography. Additionally, and according to the same source, the data on cyber violence against women in the EU is scarce and consequently there is very little known about the actual percentage of women victims of cyber violence and the prevalence of harm.
As O’Donnell and Sweetman (2018) noted, ICTs play a role in offline violence including stalking, harassment, and invasion of privacy, and new forms of violence are evolving that are unique to the online environment.
In addition, this type of abuse that begins online can be reproduced offline and vice versa.
So, from here, as an ICTs user can self-question:
How can we build a feminist Internet?, How can we turn the network into a safe space to do free activism against acts of violence and gender discrimination?
Among some of the initiatives that have been developed to support feminist causes are the “Imagine a Feminist Internet” and the newest by the same source “Making a Feminist Internet”, where issues of gender representation on the Internet were exposed. As a result of these projects, the “Feminist Principles of the Internet” were created as a set of statements that together provide a framework for women’s movements to articulate and explore issues related to technology.
Returning to streaming platform mentioned at the beginning of this post, Netflix, during the pandemic it launched a series of Instagram Live stories called “Wanna Talk About It?”, as an attempt to rise sexual violence and abuse issues specially to women, but also as a means of sharing tips for well-being and support in case of depression and psychological help to public in general. Currently, most of the content of this campaign is offered not only on social media, but also directly from the website and Netflix’s site. It’s a fact that even in the streaming industry online feminism is gaining a foothold.
To end this post…
Feminist critiques of ICT4D emphasize the need to move beyond the notion of the 4As it uses – access, affordability, availability and awareness – to address questions of power and inequality5.
After this analysis, it can be concluded that the general use of ICTs in activism is fundamentally important but it is not necessarily useful when it comes to solving problems in their entirety. Feminist activists point out that the internet facilitates the intervention and participation of users, however it does not cover the need of offline activism. On the other hand, when both online and offline activism is used, a symbiosis is produced that turns the problem into social actions.
As O’Donnell and Sweetman (2018) mention, this reminds us once more of the need to see communications technologies as neither intrinsically good or bad – rather, their impact for good or bad depends on the intent and perceptions of the users.
From my own perspective as an active user of the ICTs, I consider with great importance to get involved in ICTs governance, because they were born as a free and equal space where, if gender perspectives are not accepted and included, it means that we are not meeting the challenge of ensuring that offline rights are respected in the online context.
Sources
- O’Donnell, A. & Sweetman, C. 2018: Introduction: Gender, development and ICTs., Gender & Development, 26:2, 217-229.
- Flanagan M. & Booth A. (2002), Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture. Cambridge, Mass and London: MIT Press.
- Llanos, Beatriz; Sample, Kristen. Del dicho al hecho. Manual de buenas prácticas para la participación de mujeres en los partidos políticos latinoamericanos (in English: From saying to doing. Manual of good practices for the participation of women in Latin American political parties). Lima: IDEA Internacional, 2008.
- Pickerill, J. (2004). Rethinking political participation. Electronyc Democracy: Mobilisation. School of Media and Information Curtin University of Technology.
- Tongia, Rahul and Subrahmanian, Eswaran (2006). Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) – A Design Challenge? .Department of Engineering and Public Policy. Paper 119.http://repository.cmu.edu/epp/119.
