News and Opinions
Graphic by Ousainou Jonga, copyright Equals Now. This is the first organisation in The Gambia to implement a project focused on online gender-based violence (OGBV) and start a national conversation about it. OGBV, particularly in The Gambia, targets feminists and activists who use online advocacy to work toward a better country for women. Having found that this important aspect of gender-based...
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...
Image via Pollicy’s artworks Research is an important tool which can be used to engage and empower people, but if it is difficult to understand or inaccessible, it can be seen as daunting by the people it should be helping and reaching. Pollicy aimed to break down this barrier and utilise more creative ways of sharing the data that they collect from their research. Neema Iyer is the founder...
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...
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...
Take Back the Tech! is a campaign that reclaims the internet and women's often ignored herstory with technology, exploring and encouraging the creative use of digital technologies to denounce and eliminate online gender-based violence (GBV). Its name echoes back to the Take Back the Night marches all over the world, where women reclaimed public streets as their own, especially at night when they...