feminism

  • Source: http://www.genderit.org/articles/legacy-how-gender-built-way-we-discuss-and-use-technology

    By Sonia Randhawa

    This article is part of a special GenderIT.org edition to commemorate the life and work of academic, activist, feminist and, for many of us, friend Heike Jensen.

    heikejensen

    One of the main threads running through Heike’s work was a challenge to the dominant narrative of a benign gender-neutral technology, that is both a-political and without structural bias. Resisting dichotomies that posed problems in zero-sum terms, a pay-off between rights and security, for instance, led to looking at the ways in which the debates around issues such as censorship and privacy are constructed, and challenging the bases of the debates themselves. By probing the manner in which gender is built into the way we discuss and use technology, her articles are helping us evolve new ways of imagining a feminist internet.

    In this article, GenderIT.org talks with Anita Gurumurthy from IT For Change about gender and privacy. Anita worked with Heike in the Gender and Citizenship in the Information Society research programme.

  • By Luz Maria Martinez

    It felt like we were all there on a mission — to be heard, to tell the world we are here this is how we think, dance, paint, talk, dress but our issues are interconnected.

    The 4th Women's World Conference, 1995 in Beijing, China officially turns 20 in September 2015. So not only has this year been a year of review but it is also a time for retrospection about what and who we were in 1995. For me, this hindsight is like a trailer for an up and coming film on a fast forward button.

    Where to begin? When in doubt, mid-way always works.

    At the time, I along with my colleague and friend Mavic Balleza was part of the Isis communication team. One of our tasks was to cover interesting women to feature in the Isis International third quarter issue of Women in Action (WiA).

    Beijing Mavic
    Mavic Balleza holding white jacket and Luz Martinez holding folders of the Isis communication team.

    As someone new to Asia and to the women's movement, the entire process and trip was an extravaganza of women.

  • By Anne Marie Goetz and Joanne Sandler

    Source: https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/anne-marie-goetz-joanne-sandler/women%27s-rights-have-no-country#.VKqMi632HbI.gmail

    There is no blueprint for holding fast against the arguments used to dismiss women's humanity, or defending our hard won human rights. It's time to meet, to brainstorm and try new formats.

    At the 2012 Forum of the Association of Women’s Rights for Development (AWID) in Istanbul, there were heated discussions about whether to lobby for a Fifth World Conference on Women in 2015. The majority of older generation feminists taking part expressed reluctance. A young Turkish feminist took the floor and challenged us, essentially saying: “It’s fine for those of you who had the chance to go to Beijing and Nairobi to decline this opportunity. But what about my generation? We never had the chance to mobilize the way that you did. We need this!”

  • by Claudia C. Lodia

    Central to the underlying spirit of building sustainable peace is the realization that visions of peace are rooted in specific contexts. This particular understanding has been deployed as a dominant strand within the developing discourse on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) in the Global South. With the passing of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on October 31, 2000 − a resolution pushed for by feminist antimilitarists and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) cross-nationally, in order to formalize the mainstreaming of gender in peace and conflict operations − what has emerged and continues to take shape is the challenge of its implementation and translation.