ICTs for Feminist Movement Building: Activist Toolkit

Just Associates (JASS) Southern Africa, the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and Women'sNet are very pleased to announce the launch of a new resource: ICTs for Feminist Movement Building: Activist Toolkit

Across the world, women are using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to support rights agendas, tell their own stories and challenge emerging issues in access, women's rights and violence. Women can use ICTs for social, political and economic participation. They can access education and health information that can change their lives and use ICTs to organise for change.

This toolkit aims to help organisations and activists strengthen use of ICTs to build movements that challenge inequality while putting women's voices and experiences front and centre in our communications. We cannot create change alone. We must build movements that work on many fronts and lift up the voices and experiences of many.

We developed the toolkit for the Southern African region, but the content can be adapted and used in any context.

We invite you to:

Download, use and share the toolkit
Share your feedback with us at info@takebackthetech.net or @takebackthetech.
Join our social media campaign to promote the toolkit. Post and tweet using #feministICTs.

Suggest tweets

Communicating creatively & effectively is critical for feminist movement building #feministICTs https://www.apc.org/en/node/20759
Put women's voices and experiences front and centre #feministICTs https://www.apc.org/en/node/20759
Share women's experiences to provide evidence for policy change #feministICTs https://www.apc.org/en/node/20759
Feminist messaging: Messages that challenge sexist thinking & gets reader to think differently #feministICTs https://www.apc.org/en/node/20759

Why we developed the toolkit

ICTs impact us all, so we need to understand them, influence how they are developed, empower ourselves to use them and harness them to make a difference.

As with all communication, ICTs can be used as a powerful tool for our liberation, but they can also be used to threaten and marginalise us. Just as in the offline world, women can face violence and security threats online.

We need to strengthen our use of ICTs to help build movements that challenge inequality and put women’s voices and experiences front and centre in our communications. We cannot create change alone. We must build movements that work on many fronts and lift up the voices and experiences of many.

Women’s organisations and other organisations interested in gender equality need to use ICTs strategically – to improve how we communicate to amplify women’s voices, influence agendas and change attitudes.

We want movements that are effective, resilient, visible and safe. Building feminist communication strategies using ICTs helps us achieve this.

As feminist activists we believe that we should

Experiment and be creative in the way we communicate
Think about how communications can help us to build movements for social justice
Develop feminist communication strategies for our organisation that amplifies women’s voices and supports us in telling our own stories
Think about which ICTs to use and when to use them
Adopt a feminist approach to our use and understanding of ICTs communicate in ways that challenge gender stereotypes