Image from Tunapanda Kibera comic strip. The community of Kibera in Nairobi is one of the largest urban informal settlements and is estimated to have a population of over 1 million. This community, like many across the continent, faced higher rates of gender-based violence (GBV) due to COVID-19. At the heart of this crisis is women, especially those in lockdown with abusive partners. A lesser-…
Image via Zine-ing a Feminist Internet The zine-making collective ‘No Sweetness Here’ was formalised through the AWC-TBTT grant process. The collective consists of Youlendree Appasamy and Wairimu Muriithi. Wairimu, a feminist reader, writer, editor and curator of cool things whose areas of research and writing include crime and criminality, queer cultural production, freedom of expression and…
Sodfa Daaji is a Tunisian-Italian feminist-abolitionist engaged in Europe and Africa. She advocates for women’s rights, and her activism focuses particularly on how culture, tradition and religion affect the achievement of women’s rights. She is also the founder and executive director of the African Legal Think Tank on Women’s Rights (ALTOWR) and the project lead for the Handbook. ALTOWR is a…
Image via Hacking systems of oppression and protecting our vital strengths: A feminist framework for self-defence by Anirban Ghosh (illustrator, designer).Self-defence and body-awareness training found me. Due to my own experiences of sexual assault, it bothered me that the majority of self-defence classes in South Africa – mostly aimed at women – were reduced to sequences of (sometimes…
It was as a martial arts practitioner that I first learnt the dark irony of violence. It very rarely looks like an anonymous attacker or a dark alleyway. It also doesn’t go around seeking a randomised, weak and vulnerable-looking target either. Rather, it shows up as an exercise of power by a mentor we respect, or by an intimate partner we love. It shows up in our schools, gym classes and news…
Shorgol presents brief stories regarding experiences and conversations around sexual agency and rights and the digital space. The illustrated stories are based on case studies, research and in-depth discussions with university-aged youth in the community. This graphic story is the result of research by an All Women Count - Take Back the Tech! grantee in 2020.
This piece was originally published by the Foundation for Media Alternatives (FMA). You can also consult their recent analysis, using the TBTT mapping tool, of online gender-based violence in the Philippines in this article. While the Internet has grown to become a basic need for people to access information, services, and form social connections and communities, it similarly allows for same…
This is not just another of the dozens of articles about COVID-19 apps already published in the media around the world. This post is based on the assertion that we women experience a continuum of surveillance over our bodies, and that this control is exacerbated during health crises. We are not safe when we move around cities. We are raped or killed just for walking down the street, but we are…
The world is suddenly and radically changed. But this is not the radical change that we as feminists, activists, thinkers and campaigners had hoped for. At the APC Women’s Rights Programme (WRP) we believe in putting people at the centre and leading with care and responsibility for each other, ourselves and the planet. We work towards imagining and making a feminist internet, and as much as the…
In October 2019, student protests ignited in Chile, the first was in response to an increase in transport fares in the capital. The movement rapidly gained momentum. It was a revolt against increasingly extreme inequalities, privatisation and neo-liberalism. Government repression was not long in coming: a state of emergency, curfews, internet shutdowns, censorship on social networks, police…