10 Dec: International Human Rights Day

December 10, the final day of the 16-day activism against gender-based violence, falls on the International Human Rights Day.

Do you know your basic human rights? If you don't, it's a good time to start. These are some of the most useful guarantees you (should) have in civil society. The only way to actually have them in action is by knowing what they are, and claiming for it!

Here's a brief summary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Within the rights and freedoms, there are conditions and stipulations. To check out the overview, go to the United Nations website.

This declaration is a piece of document created from a specific time in our collective history. So it also carries within it some gender biases from 1948. For example, every person in the document is referred to in male terms ("he", "his", "brotherhood")

Women's movements across the world have fought for the recognition of women's perspectives into the understanding of rights and freedoms. This happened in different ways for different priorities at different times in different places.

Globally, the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 is generally seen as an important event that raised the prominence of women's rights as human rights, equally and without discrimination.

How would human rights that apply differently to women as it would to men?

For example, how would the right to privacy or security look like to a woman who is in a situation of domestic violence? Do a quick search on the internet for "rights to privacy" and "communication". How many of your search results include violence against women as part of its dimension and understanding of privacy rights?

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is one of the most exciting online collaborative knowledge building projects in recent times. Started in 2001, it currently contains 1,524,435 articles, and many other localised wikipedia sites in other national languages.

In theory, anyone with an internet connection is able to add articles and resources, edit information and participate in editorial decisions. Many users including students, journalists and researchers have begun to use wikipedia as a source of information and reference.

So that this resource does not commit the same mistake as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (when first conceived), we have to make sure that gender perspectives are taken into account.

From today until next year's 16 Days of Activism,
make a personal commitment to add to the information available in wikipedia through the perspective of women's rights.

For example, under the "Privacy" article, add information about how women in situations of violence relate to this issue. Add in an article about your shero, and raise the presence of women who have contributed significantly to society and knowledge. Make it a collective project.

You can find out how to add content to wikipedia on the getting started page, or ask specific questions if you come across any difficulty.

Discuss with others on Tech Talk & VAW on how your initiative is going.

Let's keep the activism strong!

November 29th was the International Women Human Rights Defenders Day. This means keeping one day, every year, in recognition and remembrance of individuals who have committed their lives to defending the rights of women as human beings.

Take Back The Tech! is partly in recognition of the same. In the field of information and communications technology (ICTs), as part of science and technology in general, women and grrls who have contributed meaningfully to the field are rarely valued or named.

For example, Ada Lovelace who played a significant role in developing the potential of the Difference Engine and the Analytical Machine (early predecessor of the computer) is obscured by Charles Babage, who is credited with being the 'father' of modern computers.

Grace Hopper, who invented the first computer language composed of words (FLOW-MATIC), has also until fairly recently, been under-recognised.

Even in supposedly 'progressive' ICTs spaces, like the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (F/LOSS) movements, women and grrls got a little fed up with the ever-present culture of masculinities and carved their own spaces, like Linux Chix.

There must be millions of unnamed sheroes that we have encountered in the course of our lives. Think of sheroes - from ordinary grrls to sacred cows - that have made a difference in your life. Call her the shero that she is for making an impact in how you experience life, technology, and/or understand violence against women.

Add your own shero here. Send an SMS to 15 people, telling them about your shero, and ask them for theirs. Spray her name on walls and over the internet.

Name her. Honor her. Party in her name.

Some examples of Sheroes initiaves popping up in different spaces :)

• A explorar a Galeria: Grandes Pensadoras - confabulando
• International Campaign on Human Rights Defenders
• Sheroes Central
• Sheroes - Celebrating the Courage and Conviciton of Extraordinary Women
• Know more?
  

Tired of being told what is sexy and desirable?
Write your own definition of sexuality!
Populate digital spaces with your own understanding and meanings.
Start with a haiku

It is no surprise to hear that pornography is big business on the internet. A commercial research company estimates pornography as a USD57 billion industry worldwide, with 12% of total websites being dedicated to pornography. The lucrative pornography industry makes it one of the main players in impacting how most of us use media. From things like VHR, digital video disks (DVD), video online streaming, to 3G mobile telephone technology and iPods, the porn industry has dabbled and pushed in money to see which kinds of platform can reach masses of consumers. And their preferences usually count.

The funny thing is, the reason they are so powerful is because they have the power of consumers behind them -- people who have the capacity to access and use technology, to purchase content, or at least, have a say in what is wanted.

The classic consumer imagined in this situation is male. So the understanding and definition of sexuality and desire for the purchase of this 'classic consumer' is imagined within the same old, main/male-stream heterosexual framework: women are seen as sexually passive objects, while men are seen as sexually active subjects.

This is one of the problems with pornography. What women want is dictated within the viewpoint of what men want women to want.

A quick check on global statistics shows that there are at least as many women as there are men in the world, and a majority of them has a higher percentage of women in employment as compared to men. What happens to our consumer power? What happens to our capacity to define what sexualities mean from our diverse experiences? Why must we leave this in the hands of men?

You have the ability to decide on which technological platform or developer you would like to support. Don't like porn? Find out if your telecommunications provider is making deals with porn producers. Or use your access to technology - however 'low' or 'high' tech - to write your own ideas of female sexual agency.

Populate digital spaces with your own understanding
and meaning of sexualities.

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry that usually has a pattern of 5-7-5 sound units, like syllables. The first line has five syllables, the second has seven syllables, and the third goes back to five syllables.

Example:

Suppressing a yawn
Another pair of long legs
I switch off the porn

You can also write a Renga, which is a collaborative form of haiku.

If this is just plain complicated, or not something you're into, write anything you like! Collaboratively write a piece of prose, limerick, rant, dialogue… etc.

No rhyming or actual/pretence of talent needed. Just have fun :)

• Go to the campaign wiki working space.
• Register for an account at the wiki working space, or log in if you already have one.
• Go to "Stories & Experiences", and click on "Haikus on Sexuality".
• Click "edit", and put in your words!

If you don't have regular internet connection, you can write yours offline and email it to us at ideas AT takebackthetech DOT net, and we'll put it up for you.

Or if you prefer, add them directly to the comments section on this website.

The boundary between digital and physical spaces can be unclear.

Ideas about what makes a 'woman' and a 'man', the power dynamics between the genders, how they should relate to each other, disavowal of other forms of gender identities and more, can be formed, repeated and circulated within online spaces.

But these ideas also move from the containment in computers, to the people who are consuming, producing and reproducing them. From there, it is carried to offline spaces, where people interact in the home, at school, coffee shops, workplaces, restaurants etc. The direction can also happen the other way around, or in unexpected ways.

Agitate the spaces you occupy. Bring your online activism to your offline presence. One simple way, print stickers!

• Click to download and save the sticker sets below, in the format you're most comfortable with (image file for graphics software, OpenOffice or Microsoft Office)
• Add your own words
• Print them onto sticker papers
• You're ready to go :)

Sticker Set 1 - Campaign icon
"Take Back The Tech" in English, Spanish & French
Format available: pdf (501kb)

Sticker Set 2 - Campaign icon (blank)
Blank so you can add you own words
Formats available: jpeg (253kb), odp (274kb), doc (275kb) & ppt (290kb)

Sticker Set 3 - Campaign banner (mixed)
"Take Back The Tech" in multiple languages (English, Spanish, French, Tagalog, Malay, German, Portuguese, Catalan, Afrikaans & Xhosa); and
Blank spaces so you can add your own words, or translate the tagline in your own language.
Formats available: jpeg (314kb), odp (340kb), doc (337kb) & ppt (352kb)

Or if you made your own stickers, share them with others! Email them to ideas AT takebackthetech DOT org, and we'll put them up here. Or you can upload them to the campaign wiki gallery:

• Register for an account at the wiki working space, or log in if you already have one.
• Go to the "gallery" page.
• Click "upload", and just follow the simple instructions.
• If you have problems, leave a comment, and we'll get back to you ASAP.

If you use instant messengers to chat online, or blog, or have your presence on other kinds of digital spaces (e.g. myspace, friendster, etc.), change your icon for the next few days until the last day of the campaign - 10th December.

Amplify the activism against gender-based violence through your networks and contacts. Make your commitment towards ending violence against women bold and loud.

There are multiple banners on this campaign that you can download and use at the campaign tech tool box or at the wiki working space.

Or you can create your own! Make your own funky designs and share it around.

• Register for an account at the wiki working space, or log in if you already have one.
• Go to the "gallery" page.
• Click "upload", and just follow the simple instructions.
• If you have problems, leave a comment, and we'll get back to you ASAP.

Radio has long been acknowledged as one of the most powerful, practical and cost-effective communications tool. Particularly for women who are expected to take on several different responsibilities at any one time, radio can be a great way to actively listen and acquire information while doing other things.

However, according to the 2005 Global Media Monitoring Report, women are most underrepresented in the news in radio compared to other kinds of media.

Take back the radio! Use it as an information tool that does more than import you the latest tunes from developed countries with a big marketing budget. Play with the media

• Think of some topics around violence against women that doesn't get much airtime, or something that you would like to know more about, or contribute to. For example, the impact of new information and communications technology (ICTs) on pornography and how this affects women, or how things like the internet has changed intimate relationships and where violence can feature in that, etc.
  
  
• Call up your local radio station and suggest a topic that they can discuss, or as a call-in listeners opinion poll. Let them know that 25 November - 10 December is period where people around the world are campaigning against gender-based violence.
  
  
• Community radio is also an effective way to take radio into your own hands, and generate content that is relevant to your community - whether it is in a remote area, or at the heart of a city. Find out if there is a community or alternative radio initiative in your area, and ask them if they are interested to take up an issue around this theme. Or if you can do a programme on your own, interview some people on their opinions. Make this a 16-day project with your friends.
  
  
• Podcasting is an emerging tool that enables internet users to have their own 'radio' channel and create own content over the worldwideweb. All you need is connectivity and a mike, where you can record your programme and upload them -- usually as MP3 files -- onto a server. Then other internet users are able to 'tune in' or log on and listen to what you have to say. You can find out more about podcasts and how you can use it in a Techsoup article by Michael Gowan, "Podcasting: A New Voice on the Net".
  
  
• Happy buzzing!

Change your status message to something thought-provoking in your network of contacts.

In 1999, a 50 year-old former security guard pleaded guilty to cyberstalking in Los Angeles. He used the internet to terrorise a 28 year-old woman who rejected his advances. Some of the stuff he did included posing as the woman in several internet chat rooms and online bulletin boards. There, he posted her actual contact details like telephone number and home address, and pretended that she fantasized about being raped. The online harassment spilled over to her physical safety when at least six men knocked on her door, sometimes in the middle of the night, saying that they wanted to rape her. This is the first successful prosecution under California's new cyberstalking law, and the former security guard faces upto six years in prison.

In many other parts of the world, legislation is slower to respond to such emerging threats. There are many issues at stake that are still not debated at length.

For example, the internet and digital communications technology have been used by governments extensively as a tool of surveillance, to monitor and control the public's activity. As a result, tools like anonymous remailers have been developed to make it harder to trace the identity of the person who is sending information over the internet. At the same time, this has been abused by cyberstalkers to hide their identity when they post harassing content in their stalking activity.

One significant problem is the gender disparity that exists in information and communications technology. The majority of technology developers and those in decision-making positions are men, who in turn, are able to shape and define this field according to their dominant perspectives. Issues like the right to privacy are constructed in a gender-blind manner, without much consideration of how this will affects women in particular. Video games, which is significant platform to get young people used to digital technology, are often targeted for boys.

In short, the digital world of information and communications technology is one that grrls and women have to work pretty hard at to become comfortable and empowered subjects.

It's time to take back the tech! :)

Be smart on how you use things like IM (internet messenger) and chats. Don't give out personal information that is not compulsory for people to know. Never sign in using one of these platforms because phishing happens here.

Status messages are all cool and funky, but 'truth' might not be totally necessary. You don't have to announce to everyone in your contact list that you're on a toilet break, preoccupied with life, on the verge of a nervous breakdown or hanging out with some friends at this and that address. Play with it instead.

Change your status message today into something that provokes thought in your network of friends and acquaintances.

Invite them to this site - www.takebackthetech.net; grrl gamer - www.grrlgamer.com; stop VAW - www.stopvaw.org; WHO@ - www.haltabuse.org; or any of those del.icio.us sites that your tagged on day 7.

Happy playing!

In 2004, a multi-media messanging (MMS) clip of two teenage students engaged in a private sexual act was circulated and eventually put on sale by a third-party in a popular auction site.

Meanwhile, hundreds of women are are catching street harassers red-handed with their mobile phones, posting images of those who leer, grope and more on a blogsite.

Do you have a mobile phone that can capture videos? Do you have a video camera? Do you have a camera and software that is able to make animated clips?

What will you shoot? Whatever you have, use it! And make videos that can interrupt violence against women.

Komas takes back the tech and invites you to submit video clips.

This 16-day initiative aims to open up digital spaces as a moving visual discourse against gender-based violence.

Find out how, and start shooting :)

A study based based on 50 surveys from around the world shows that at least 1 in every 3 women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or abused in her lifetime.

Depressing statistics. But at the same time, think of all the women that you know. Grrls and women that you have chatted with on the bus, at some party, waiting for the elevator, at a work function, distant relatives, their partners…. There are so many survivors amongst us.

1 in every 3 women whom we come across has experienced targeted and senseless violence; and they are just… fine. We walk amongst unnamed sheroes; with stories of tenacity, courage and everyday survival.

Action begins from reality. Tell your story. Use technology to amplify your voice. If the rabble is loud in its protest, if 1 in 3 women speak their case, then reality might start to look a little less ridiculous.

• Go to Talk Tech & VAW
• Click on “Share Your Story”
• Start telling yours!

Get inspired. Digital Storytelling. Listen to survivors of violence against women take up multimedia technology, and tell own powerful, transformative stories.

One of the most powerful ways to counter violence against women is through knowledge. If you are one of the lucky few who can connect to the internet, you would know how amazing it is to be able to find information and resources available in digital spaces.

You may have come across an interesting resource, important information, funky initiative or local online support communities in the worldwideweb. Instead of filing it away as a bookmark in your own computer, share them with others!

The website del.icio.us (pronounced as "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. Basically, it allows users to share their bookmarks with other Internet users or with members of their communities, using common "tags" (del.icio.us defines a "tag" as a simple word or keyword used to describe a bookmark).

For example, you use the tag "feminism" to bookmark websites that are related to the topic. By doing so, you are contributing to the pool of websites that have been tagged with "feminism". Tags which are used by many users are included in del.icio.us' hotlist - or most popular tags / topics. The hotlist changes depending on what tags are being used by members of the del.icio.us community at any given time. It's a great way to know which topics are concerning most internet users.

• Spend half an hour surfing the internet, and look for information or websites that will help others take control of technology to counter violence against women.
• When you've found them, share them through del.icio.us
• Go to: "http://del.icio.us"
• Click on "register" in the upper right hand corner
• Enter your details and register.
• You're now ready to bookmark any page on the internet and share it through this online social bookmarking tool.
• Click on "post"
• You will be requested for a URL of the website you want to bookmark.
• Once you have entered the URL, you can add descriptions and tags (which are basically keywords assigned by you) to the site.
• Begin by sharing this campaign. Type in: http://www.takebackthetech.net
• Add tags, such as:
• takebackthetech
• women
• ICT
• internet
• activism
• gender
• feminism
• "violence against women" (you have to put phrases in inverted commas or they will be considered as three separate tags instead of one)
• more?
• Click save, and the website becomes part of your bookmark list.
• For every site/page that you bookmark in this action, add the tag "takebackthetech", "violence against women" and "ICT". This is so that:
• we can connect with each other through del.icio.us to know that our bookmarking efforts for today is part of a collaborative action;
• to highlight the connection between violence against women and information communications technology, and inform others about our concern around this issue.
• We will be searching del.icio.us at the end of the day, and collate information and sites that you have bookmarked into the resources page of this website.
• Happy bookmarking!

Everyone knows something related to technology that someone else might not. It can be something as simple as use how to set up a web-based email account to elaborate things like how to fiddle with javascripts. One of the best ways for knowledge to grow in a more horizontal and less hierarchical way is to share what you know.

Some people can find it daunting to begin playing with technology. This might be caused by a larger social definition of technology that excludes them – such as older wo/men, those who are differently-abled or young girls in some contexts. In a 2004 survey of 37 countries, it was found that 88% of college students who intended to major in computer science were male, while the percentage of women fell to the same level as it was in the 1970s.

Many abusers who use information and communications technology are adept with the latest tool, gadget or potential hacks. Building knowledge is a powerful way to counter the continued mis/use of technology to commit violence against women.

• Think of someone who has told you s/he wished to know how to do something in relation to technology. It can be a friend, a colleague, a family member, or someone from a mailing list.
• Contact them, and offer to do a step-by-step tutorial on how to do something that is technology related. Come up with a simple project together. For example, cleaning up a personal computer from spyware and malware.
• If you can, write up your experiences and share them with others at Talk Tech & VAW.
• From here, we can develop guides that can be used in the future by larger numbers of people.
• Build knowledge & share what you know!

Stories and media attention on incidences of violence against women often targets the woman. Stories are sensationalised, sometimes sexualised. Instead of condemning the abuser or perpetrator's action, survivors are narrated to hold at least partial blame for the violence.

Some kinds of violence happen and continue in silence and secrecy: behind closed doors of the home, in the streets with a lewd remark and a grope, in internet discussion forums behind an anonymous handle or nickname, through SMS (short message server) behind an unregistered pre-paid number, using a free web-based email like gmail and more.

Remove the protection that abusers have by this concealment. If others know their face, tactics or pseudonym, it makes it harder to repeat the abuse with someone else.

Take control of your media tool. If you have a mobile phone camera, digital camera, pen and paper, internet access and more, you can take over what story gets told, and in what way.

• Snap a picture of an abuser or perpetrator
• It can be someone you know who is abusing his/her partner, family member or children, a street sexual harasser, an acquaintance who bragged about his date rape etc.
• If it happened through digital spaces, make a print screen or screen shot of the event. Example: go to the forum room and press CTRL + print screen on your computer, paste it on a word document.
• If it is on your mobile phone, snap a picture of the message with the phone number clearly displayed.
• Put it up on the TakeBackTheTech flickr group
• Tag it! Assign tags: "Take Back The Tech", "Abuser","Rapist", whatever you think s/he should be named.
• We'll collect them and put them up on this site in the "Corridor of Criminals"
• If you don't have a flickr account, email it to us: ideas AT takebackthetech DOT net
• If yours is a story, or if you have questions, bring them up in Talk Tech & VAW
• Target the abuser.

The internet is a powerful disseminator of norms because of how quickly and widely it transmits information. Just think of how quickly it managed to paint a picture of how women in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime, through photographs and video clips that were forwarded from one person to another and many more.

Women's organisations have worked with this quality of one-to-many enabled by the internet; including the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) who tactically used an email viral strategy to make visible the atrocities against women that were conducted by the Taliban regime during its reign.

The internet is also a messy place, with many people saying many things through many ways at the same time. Because of gender inequality existing in physical spaces - from homes to schools to workplaces to law and policy making arenas - the dominant voice that is heard or recognised in digital spaces also tend to me male.

The potential to surface muted voices is there, but it takes thought and action.

Who gets the most airtime in your town, city, country or web community? Who gets heard and seen, and whose concerns are always taken into account? Whose needs are absent? Whose face is not seen, or always seen only through the lens of those who are in control? How does the internet represent the idea of "woman"? If women are constantly constructed as passively sexualised, needing control or just plain dumb and always in need of help, how does this impact on violence against women?

• Think of this, and snap a picture. Change how women are currently defined in digital spaces.
• It can be anything, from a piece of clothing to writings on the wall to the picture of your seriously weird best friend.
• Put it up on a social networking photo-sharing tool like Flickr
• Tag it! Assign keywords that makes your representation appear when images and visual representations of "woman" are searched by hundreds and thousands of other users.
• Example: tag "girl", "violence against women" and (don't forget) "take back the tech"; to a photograph of a girl laughing at a flasher.
• Flickr group: we have created a flickr group to collate your vision.
• If you have a flickr account (it's free and easy to use, so you might want to consider it), submit your photographs to the Take Back The Tech group.
• If you use other photo-sharing tools, or have problems with using flickr, send us your picture via email to ideas AT takebackthetech DOT net, or give a shout at Talk Tech & VAW
• Happy snapping :)

• Go to an internet or cyber café
• Internet or cyber cafes are places where people can go and use computers with internet access for a certain fee.
• Users include travelers, young people, or people located in areas where it is not cost-effective to have internet access in the home.
• Find a cyber café near where you live, and invite their many users to think about violence against women instead.
• Change the first thing they see by changing the computer's homepage.
  
  Here’s how:
• Mozilla Firefox
  • Open Firefox, and go to “Tools” > “Option”
  • Click on the “General” Tab
  • Under “Homepage: Location(s)”, type in the URL you want. E.g. http://www.takebackthetech.net, or the address of a local organisation that works on violence against women etc.
  • Click “OK”
• Internet Explorer

• Open IE, and go to “Tools” > “Internet Options”
• Under “Homepage: Address”, type in the URL you want.
• E.g. http://www.takebackthetech.net, or the address of a local organisation that works on violence against women etc.
• Click “OK”.
• Netscape
  • Open Netscape, and go to “Edit” > “Preferences”
  • Click on “Navigator”
  • Under “Navigation Starts with: Homepage”
  • Under “Homepage”, type in the URL you want. E.g. http://www.takebackthetech.net, or the address of a local organisation that works on violence against women etc.
  • Click “OK”
• Safari
  • Go to the “Safari” menu, click “Preferences”
  • Click on the “General” tab
  • Under “New windows open with”, select “Homepage”
  • Under “Homepage”, type in the URL you want. E.g. http://www.takebackthetech.net, or the address of a local organisation that works on violence against women etc.
  • Click on the red dot in the upper left corner to close the application, and you’re done.
• If you use any other kinds of web browsers, let others know how to change the homepage in TechTalk.

• Instead of the usual stuff you put at the bottom of your emails, add something about violence against women for these 16 days
• You can find handy information here at the UNIFEM website , but with some searching, you'll find a lot more.
• Microsoft Outlook, how to change signature:
  1. Open Microsoft Outlook
  2. Go to Tools, then "Options"
  3. click on "Mail Format" tab
  4. Select "HTML", for "Compose in this message format"
  5. Click on "Signatures"
  6. Click on "new"
  7. Under "1. Enter a name...", write "TakeBack"
  8. Click "edit", then type in anything you want!

• Mozilla Thunderbird:
  1. Open a text file.
  2. Write in anything you want and save it as "TakeBack" somewhere on your computer
  3. Open Mozilla Thunderbird.
  4. Click on Local Folders, then click on the name of your account.
  5. Select "Attach this signature".
  6. Click "Choose", find your "TakeBack.txt" file and click okay, and that's it.
• If you use any other kinds of email client like Eudora or Pegasus, let others know how to change the email signature in TechTalk.

• Send an SMS to 10 friends.
• Share your knowledge by letting them know a piece of information you are aware of about violence against women:
  • phone number to a VAW organisation
  • statistics of rape, domestic violence or sexual harassment in your country
  • e.g "Around the world at least 1 in every 3 women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime"
• Invite them to do something about it.
• Wish them a good "International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women"!