Pollicy’s Work on Feminist Tech and Digital Innovation at CSW 67: Addressing the Digital Divide and Promoting Inclusion
Pollicy is attending the 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 67) and sharing their work in various pre-events, side events, and closed meetings. We will work with different groups from the tech community, feminists, the UN, academia, governments, and the wider civil society to study data feminism, feminist tech, and the rights nexus in the context of data, innovation, and digital technologies.
We will be joining partners to talk about how tech design and policies can help people rethink technologies in order to build societies that are fair and include everyone. The organization will also share key recommendations on how improved data and technology can be harnessed to craft better life experiences.
The digital divide is more than an access issue, and Pollicy hopes to shed light on this at CSW 67. Women and girls don’t always have the money, the education, or the same chances as men to use ICT goods and services. Internet penetration rates are higher for men than for women worldwide. Pollicy seeks to address these inequalities by working with marginalized groups and building feminist digital resilience.
The “Backlashes, Technology, and Gender Justice” side event will be held at the UN Headquarters on Tuesday, March 7th, and will include Pollicy, along with other organizations such as Sweden, ACT Alliance, Act Church of Sweden, and GIN-SSOGIE. This event will give people a chance to talk about how technology can be used to stop violence against women and help women get the same rights as men.
Pollicy will also join partners to launch a study on “Online Harassment and Censorship Against Women Human Rights Defenders” during a session inside the UN building on Wednesday, March 8th. We will be joining our partner, Dan Church Aid. This event will focus on presenting the recommendations from the report and promoting discussions on how to enhance online safety for women human rights defenders.
The “Reimagining a Feminist Digital Revolution, Innovation, and Education’’ parallel session on Wednesday, March 8th, will be hosted by Pollicy, Akina Mama, and Nawi Collective. The session will explore feminist alternatives to a digital revolution that centers on women and minorities. It will also assess whether an enabling environment exists for women’s and girls’ digital innovations and education. Register for it here.
On Friday, March 10, Pollicy will participate in the “Protest+Power: Feminist Movement Organizing in Technology” session, which aims to provide an opportunity for feminist tech groups from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to share experiences, trends, challenges, and needs of their ecosystem. This event will be a great chance to talk about how technology can help promote gender equality and how the digital divide needs to be fixed. (Please follow us on Twitter for more details)
The “A Feminist Internet: Envisaging a Better Online World for All Women and Girls” panel discussion will be held virtually on March 14, 2023, and Pollicy will participate. In the talk, we will talk about why we need a feminist internet to change both online and offline structures of power based on gender. This session will be a chance to talk about how technology can be used to promote equality and inclusion online, especially for women. (Please follow us on Twitter for more details)
Pollicy will also launch an information note on “Online Violence Against Women in Politics (OVAW-P) in Kenya” during the CSW 67. This information note will look at how online violence against women politicians will affect the Kenyan General Elections in 2022 and give suggestions for how to fix the problem. (Please follow us on Twitter for more details)
Our work looks at how the gap between men and women is getting wider and how tech designs and products could leave other marginalized groups behind. The organization works with women and girls from rural backgrounds, people with disabilities, and adults with low literacy levels to present challenges and solutions through available data for inclusion.
Pollicy’s work also includes building feminist digital resilience through various programs and studies. Through our VOTE: Women Programme, we aim at building data skills and digital resilience among women politicians. This was inspired by our reports, Amplified Abuse, Online Violence Against Women in the 2021 Uganda General Election, and “Afro Feminist Data Futures”, which helped understand how women organize for social change and the common good using the internet.
