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Gender Issues in Tech & Internet Governance

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Gender Capacity Building Orgs

A collection of organizations and actions undertaken around the world to help solve the persistent problem of gender inequality in tech and governance. Special thanks to the IGF Gender & Access Best Practices Forum, and their latest report, which helped this list.

WomensNet

WomensNet is a South African feminist organization set out to establish gender equity through the use of ICTs. The organization’s website serves as informational hub, with content generated by and for women interested in taking control of their use of ICTs as well Internet’s content as it pertains to women.

WomensNet sees women’s empowerment through technology as a gateway to facilitating greater social benefits, including an elevation of poverty and it focuses on this goal by addressing personal and organizational skills deficits--by providing hands-on training and needs-based workshops.

Currently, the project is focused on three core projects, including social media training and safety for young women and girls, re-appropriating digital storytelling for women and connecting women throughout South Africa to build stronger bonds and professional networks.

Reprograma

Statement from Reprograma CEO, Mariel Reyes:

Reprograma is a non-profit social entrepreneurship project that seeks to inspire, empower and educate unemployed women, by providing them with computing skills and professional training opportunities.

Our objective is that, by the end of our 8-week bootcamp program, our graduates are better equipped to successfully contribute to Brazil’s technology sector, and are able to access a greater number of professional opportunities in this area.

During the program we teach our students front-end programming, specifically HTML, CSS and Javascript and also teach them how to use tools such as Business Model Canvas, Design Sprint, and UX Design. Throughout the program our students receive visits from tech sector professionals who share with them their experience in technology and participants also visit a few technology companies and start-ups to tech a sense of what it’s like to work in this sector.

Lastly, once students graduate, we strive to share with them as many opportunities as we can so that they can succeed in getting a job in the Brazilian technology industry.

We will launch our 3rd class on March 27th through May 19th for which 32 women ages 16+ will be selected to participate. The only cost for the course is a registration fee of 400 reais or USD 120. We plan on having two more classes this year in addition to this one.

Feminist Approach to Technology (FAT)

FAT’s mission is to enhance women’s awareness, interest and participation in technology in order to decrease the gender divide in all technical fields and strengthen the involvement of women in the technical workforce and in policy-making. We believe that technology is necessary for the empowerment of women because of the important role technology plays in the economic and social development.

Young Women's Leadership Program The aim of the YWLP is to use technology and new media as a feminist tool to build the leadership skills of disadvantaged young women. In this program, we work with marginalized girls and young women, between the ages of 14 to 25, through a safe and accessible technology learning space called the Tech Center on a regular basis. The technology skill training in the Tech Center is interspersed with various feminist leadership-building modules in such a way that it not only build individual agency of the girls and young women but also empowers them as change agents within their community. Many of the alumni of this program in Delhi have emerged as new leaders within our organization and change makers within their community in such a way that we can say that the program is for young women and led by young women.

Girls and STEM (Jugaad Lab) Our goal is to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education for underprivileged girls and provide them an opportunity to explore science, technology and innovation through hands-on learning. We aim to do this through our project “Jugaad (Innovation) Lab” which has been established as an exploratory learning space where girls between the age of 10 to 15 come to learn STEM concepts through innovative project work, while also tinkering their curiosity and spirit of inquiry. This pilot project in Delhi has recently completed 1 year and is slowly growing to reach more girls.

Advocacy Initiatives One of FAT’s goals is to create a countrywide dialogue and consensus on the need to increase women’s participation in technology-making and equal access to technology use. While FAT’s networking and advocacy efforts have increased its solidarity with women’s groups across the country, there is still a dearth of organizations working to promote women’s participation in technology creation. Intensive collaborative efforts are needed to achieve this mission. To this end, FAT runs its advocacy initiative aimed at facilitating collective actions towards bridging this gap. At present, we are working with many grass root women’s groups and organizations to build their capacity in understanding science and technology’s intersections with women’s rights issues that they work on. We are also working with them to build their skills and capacity to use technology more efficiently for their work on women’s rights.

What Makes Our Strategy Work? We believe that the feminist framework within which we analyze women’s relationship with technology and role within technology, which guides our overall approach, strategy and methodology, is what makes us an effective organization. We incorporate our understanding of power politics and exclusion in each aspect of our work, whether it is in overall program design or in carrying out smaller elements within the design.

Our Commitment FAT believes in building and supporting young women’s leadership, not just through programs but also within our organization. At present, 22 out of 26 team members are less than 30-years-old and 14 of them are young women leaders graduated from our Young Women Leadership Program. We actively invest in our young team members and strive to provide them the platform to hone their leadership skills. This is what makes our organization unique. FAT’s model has been appreciated nationally and internationally, and is being replicated in many places in India.

TechChix Tanzania

TechChix-TZ is a nonprofit organization that came into existence as an initiative by a group of women in technology fields ranging from IT technicians, Network technicians, Telecommunications, programmers and different fields of engineering. These women felt it was wise to prove statistics wrong by empowering young women to beat the odds by not only taking careers in technology fields as well as engineering, but also to take up work related to their fields. Though statistics show that the number of women enrolling in technology related courses in colleges and universities is slowly increasing, there is still much work to be done. Despite this increase, there are still very few women who graduate with degrees in ICTs that take up careers due to either prejudice or lack of confidence in their ability to deliver, since most of these careers are dominated by men in Africa.

In 2017, TechChix TZ is working with ICANNWiki to hold a number of Editing workshops at the JR Institute of Technology in Arusha, Tanzania, with an emphasis on Internet Governance and gender.

Gender Specific Infographics

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