A feminist action framework on development and digital technologies

Abstract

This document is a guiding framework on gender, development and digital/internet rights. Borrowing from feminist theories that bring together conceptions of gender justice and economic justice, it seeks to tease out the issues and positions for feminist advocacy on digital technologies and the internet.1 As the warp and weft of all social systems change with the indelible mark of the internet and digital technologies, there is a destabilisation of norms and rules. This is true for national and global institutions – from trade, commerce, financial markets, work arrangements, etc. to social and cultural arenas of communication, media and knowledge. The flux we are witness to can be harnessed by agile feminist action into a productive space that can mark a departure from traditional norms that define social power. But for this to happen, feminists need to claim historical knowledge and build an informed framework of analysis and action. So far, a strong civil and political rights framework has led feminist actions in the digital realm. Using the normative compass that feminist conceptual tools on development offer, digital rights activism must promote an idea of gender justice that accounts for the lived experience of women at the margins of the mainstream economy. This calls for a composite approach that underscores the indivisibility and interdependency of social-economic and civil-political rights. 1 This writing draws from the work of Third World feminist networks like Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and insights from personal engagement in the internet policy arena through the work of IT for Change, the organisation that the authors are associated with. This document intends to bring to feminist advocacy and action the conceptual and analytical building blocks of such an approach. It examines the substantive aspects of women’s economic, social and cultural rights, offering a new point of departure to the old idea of the “right to communicate”, bringing to the fore the idea of “cognitive justice”. Outlining why and how women’s rights in the network age requires a new conception of the right to access digital technologies, the right to knowledge and the right to development, it spells out the key “asks” in terms of national and global policies. The final section, on the directions for feminist advocacy, provides an indicative cartography of issues and spaces for action.