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Gender & Development

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‘We want that for ourselves’: how girls and young women are using ICTs to counter violence and demand their rights

Sara Baker

To cite this article: Sara Baker (2018) ‘We want that for ourselves’: how girls and young women are using ICTs to counter violence and demand their rights, Gender & Development, 26:2, 283-297, DOI: 10.1080/13552074.2018.1473229

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2018.1473229

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‘We want that for ourselves’: how girls and young women are using ICTs to counter violence and demand their rights Sara Baker

ABSTRACT Established in 2006, Take Back the Tech! is a global campaign that encourages women and girls to use technology to counter gender- based violence. Through interviews with women in the Philippines, South Africa, Kenya, and India, this article explores how, ten years later, girls and young women are ‘taking back’ technology to demand their rights and challenge violence. Despite gender norms based on patriarchal traditions, and the constant threat of violence, girls and young women are creating digital content, leading community conversations, and taking direct action against violence. Moreover, they are using technology to collaborate with, learn from, support, and unite girls in other communities.

Take Back the Tech! est une campagne mondiale établie en 2006 qui encourage les femmes et les filles à utiliser les technologies pour contrer la violence sexiste. À travers des entretiens avec des femmes aux Philippines, en Afrique du Sud, au Kenya et en Inde, cet article examine comment, dix ans plus tard, les filles et les jeunes femmes se réapproprient les technologies pour exiger le respect de leurs droits et mettre en cause la violence. Malgré des normes de genre basées sur des traditions patriarcales et la menace constante de violence qui pèse sur elles, les filles et les jeunes femmes créent des contenus numériques, prennent la tête de conversations communautaires et entreprennent des actions directes pour lutter contre la violence. Qui plus est, elles utilisent les technologies pour collaborer avec les filles d’autres communautés, apprendre d’elles, les soutenir et les unir.

Establecida en 2006, y realizada a nivel mundial, la campaña Take Back the Tech! [Recuperemos la tecnología] incentiva a mujeres y niñas a usar la tecnología para oponerse a la violencia basada en el género. A partir de entrevistas realizadas a mujeres de Filipinas, Sudáfrica, Kenia e India, el presente artículo examina cómo, transcurridos 10 años desde la implementación de la campaña, las niñas y las adolescentes están “recuperando” la tecnología para exigir sus derechos y cuestionar la violencia. A pesar de la existencia de normas de género sustentadas en tradiciones patriarcales y de la constante amenaza de violencia, éstas crean contenidos digitales, impulsan diálogos a nivel comunitario y emprenden acciones directas contra la violencia. Asimismo, utilizan estas tecnologías para colaborar con mujeres jóvenes de otras comunidades y aprender de ellas, al mismo tiempo que las apoyan y promueven su unidad.

KEYWORDS Online activism; campaigning; feminism; information and communication technologies; movement building; gender- based violence

© 2018 Oxfam GB

CONTACT Sara Baker [email protected]

GENDER & DEVELOPMENT 2018, VOL. 26, NO. 2, 283–297 https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2018.1473229

Introduction

Since its inception in 2006, the Take Back the Tech! campaign has engaged women and girls from at least 35 countries in hundreds of actions to use technology to end gender- based violence (GBV). Take Back the Tech! developed out of an article Jac SM Kee wrote for the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), exploring the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in GBV (Kee 2006). Jac SM Kee noted that while ICTs offered new avenues to commit GBV, they also provided the plat- form to share information, network, and build user capacity to counter such violence. She argued that ICTs must be used to ‘transform social relations’ (ibid., 35), by highlighting women’s contributions to ICT development and their collective creation of knowledge, building of local advocacy skills, documentation of lessons for others, promotion of women-created alternative media, and networking for solidarity.

Following these strategies, Take Back the Tech! aims to

create safe digital spaces that protect everyone’s right to participate freely, without harassment or threat to safety, realise women’s rights to shape, define, participate, use and share knowledge, information and ICT, address the intersection between women’s human rights and the internet, especially VAW [violence against women], and recognise women’s historical and critical partici- pation and contribution to the development of ICT. (https://www.takebackthetech.net/about, last checked 10 March 2017)

The collaborative campaign provides resources for women and girls to take action in their communities, primarily in the global South, by identifying problems, exploring solutions, and developing actions that suit their local contexts. Local campaigns join the broader Take Back the Tech! network, allowing them to share ideas, provide support, and amplify each other’s messages.

As is evident in its name, the campaign was modelled after Take Back the Night marches that began in the 1970s, in cities such as Philadelphia and Brussels (Horton 2009), to reclaim for women public spaces that were threatened by violence. These marches have since been taken up in cities around the world, often led by young women on college campuses. Early Take Back the Tech! campaigners also aligned their work with the already visible 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence, a global campaign that started in 1991 by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University. Both campaigns run annually from 25 November to 10 December, encompass- ing several days that honour human rights, from the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women to Human Rights Day.

As the website for 16 Days of Activism states:

[a]ctivists have used the human rights framework to transform how violence against women is understood around the world. [This] framework asserts that women are entitled to the protection, promotion and fulfillment of their human rights as one half of humanity. (Center for Women’s Global Leadership2016)

According to Charlotte Bunch, one of the founders of 16 Days of Activism, ‘[t]he most insidious myth about women’s rights is that they are trivial or secondary to the concerns

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of life and death’ (Bunch 1990, 488). By taking a rights-based approach to GBV, both 16 Days of Activism and Take Back the Tech! reframe what traditionally has been viewed as a private matter to a matter of rights violations that the public has a duty to address.

In highlighting online violence, Take Back the Tech!’s framework explicitly recognises psychological violence as part of a continuum of GBV (United Nations 1993) and empha- sises empowerment over protection. Its goal is to ensure women and girls can enjoy their rights and participate fully in society – including in online spaces. GBV is a rights violation in itself, and also restricts other rights. Research shows that freedom of expression, for example, enables women to claim other rights (Benedek and Kettemann 2014; La Rue 2011; McDiarmid and Shears 2016; Seshu 2016), but many women and girls cannot express themselves as they wish because of violence (Buni and Chemaly 2014; Citron 2009; Mijatović 2016; Thompson 2016).

Over the past decade, Take Back the Tech! has grown from a small group of passionate women’s rights activists, with a volunteer-created HTML website (Kee 2011), to a power- ful force of feminists, organisers, educators, students, sex rights activists, freedom of expression advocates, writers, artists, designers, developers, and survivors of GBV that has attracted global media attention (see, for example, Jansen and Matsura 2014; Rahman 2016), monitored technology-related GBV, and promoted women’s human rights online. At its heart, however, Take Back the Tech! is a local endeavour, encouraging grassroots action from women and girls in their own communities.

Ten years on from its inception, does Take Back the Tech! speak to a new generation? How is the campaign connecting to girls and young women in local communities? How are those girls ‘taking back’ the tech to counter GBV and demand their rights?

This article explores the campaigns of young women and girls in the Philippines, South Africa, Kenya, and India, and is based on interviews with Take Back the Tech! campaigners.

My research methods

Starting in 2014, with an online survey of 35 young campaigners in nine countries, the APC set out to determine how Take Back the Tech! could improve engagement with younger age groups. From that survey, the global campaign mailing list, and previous cam- paigns, I identified some of the local campaigns that engage young women and girls, as well as individual campaigners who themselves fit the profile. I sought interviews with individual campaigners who were young women (in their teens or 20s) in the global South, and who had Take Back the Tech! campaign experience and knowledge of what their peers faced in terms of ICT use in their respective countries.

In total, five women were able to participate in the interviews which took place between October and December 2016. Each of these women runs gender and technology pro- grammes with the target age group, and is a campaigner herself, with two women in their 20s fitting the individual campaigner profile. Two of the other participants are long- time Take Back the Tech! campaigners, pioneering local and national work on the inter- section of technology, gender, and violence.

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Interviews were conducted by Skype or email, depending on the participant’s prefer- ence and availability, and all follow-up questions were sent via email. To some extent, the benefit of audio conversation through Skype interviews enabled the sharing of deeper insights, particularly as some participants were slow to respond to email, which led to pro- tracted discussions. In all cases, interviews and follow-up questions resulted in a wide range of information, which I draw on in the section below. I combined the information according to themes that stood out in each case, and then integrated research on these themes with a review of key information on each of the geographic locations, to form four country case studies. Each case study offers a reflection of how the women inter- viewed viewed the engagement of girls and young women with ICTs.

Case studies

The Philippines: ‘Their mobile phones are almost always attached to them’

The Foundation for Media Alternatives (FMA) began localising Take Back the Tech! in the Philippines in 2009, reaching out to young people through campaign activities led by FMA’s Gender and ICT programme. The programme facilitates discussions at schools, conducts trainings on secure online communications with youth groups, and develops sol- utions such as Aksyon VAW, the country’s first app devoted to the problem of GBV. Rather than limiting activities to the 16 Days of Activism period, the FMA promotes Take Back the Tech! year-round, which allows the campaigners to maintain conversations and follow up on training sessions.

Recently, the organisation conducted a focus group with young women under 18, from urban areas, on their internet habits. All the women reported using computers and owning mobile phones – except for one student who shared a mobile phone with her mother. Gen- der and ICT Program Coordinator, Lisa Garcia, reported that girls use mobile phones for communication and social media, as well as to take selfies and play music. Many post photographs on Facebook and Instagram of what they do and where they go, ensuring, whether they intend to or not, that they are taking up public space and visible both online and offline. Lisa Garcia described a young woman, for example, who posted a daily selfie along with reactions she had received from men, encouraging her peers to share their own experiences of street harassment and other ways their bodies are ‘policed’ (email to the author, 1 November 2016).

Referring to Filipino culture, in an earlier published interview, Lisa Garcia explained that, ‘Women need to be “well-behaved”, and if you do not conform to the standards that are set, you’re a woman of ill repute’ (Alia 2015). If selfies are an ‘instinct of self-pres- ervation’ in a ‘cultural climate that continues to negate, ridicule, malign and sexualize [girls]’ (Murray 2015, 512), the selfie that directly critiques the male gaze is an act of bold resistance. Rather than silencing themselves or disappearing in the face of harass- ment, these young women reinforce their presence and challenge the forces that seek to subdue them. Their selfies claim both physical and digital space, as well as a sense of autonomy.

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Taking up space and being visible online, however, can lead to the same kind of abuse that takes place offline from people who want to control girls’ behaviour, and, in the case of social media, girls are frequently negotiating freedom from harm. Lisa Garcia said of the young women in the focus group:

Their mobile phones are almost always attached to them, even when they go to bed. All of them have Facebook accounts because that is how they usually communicate with their friends, schoolmates, and families. Most of the girls said they have more than a thousand Facebook friends, but they do not actually know all these people. For instance, one girl said she has over 4,000 Facebook friends, but only 20 per cent of them are known to her personally. (Email to the author, 1 November 2016)

With Facebook so popular, it was not surprising to Lisa Garcia that this is the site with the most reported violence. On FMA’s Take Back the Tech! map1 of technology-related GBV, nearly three in four cases involve women aged 30 or younger, and in 2016 more young women than ever approached FMA seeking assistance with online harassment. In light of FMA’s 2014 findings that women are reluctant to report technology-related violence (Garcia and Manakin 2014), Lisa Garcia was positive about the higher number of young women requesting help, and attributed this to the creation of greater awareness through campaigns. She noted that the baseline in FMA workshops on online GBV has changed over the years. Whereas in the past participants had come into workshops with- out an understanding of online GBV, a 2017 session with 200 university students revealed that young people understood online violence as real violence, and believed it should be reported to authorities.

When the FMA’s focus group revealed that girls are not learning digital security at school, Lisa Garcia and her team stepped in to train them. At the time of my research, the FMA was now meeting regularly with parents and teachers in elementary and high schools, and they planned to reach out to the Department of Education to encourage them to incorporate discussions on online harassment into the school curriculum. Partici- pants in the FMA’s secure online communications trainings had reported that they are now more conscious of online safety, apply what they learn, and share that knowledge with others. In fact, Lisa Garcia reported that girls and young women now used a variety of strategies to stop violence, including altering privacy settings, blocking offenders, switching to new accounts, reporting violations to platforms, preserving evidence, confid- ing in their parents, and filing complaints. Importantly, they were staying online and con- tinuing to express themselves.

Through the FMA’s Take Back the Tech! actions, it appeared at the time of the research that young women in the Philippines were maintaining their right to express themselves in the ways they wish. In documenting their lived realities, whether through posting cases of violence to the online map or selfies to social media, they were taking control of the nar- rative around GBV and gender discrimination.

South Africa: ‘embracing the internet as a transformative space’

APC member organisation Women’sNet works with girls through their Girls’Net project, which comprises rural South African groups that meet to discuss their experiences with

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technology. Participants range from 14 to 24 years old and all were active on social media, though data costs sometimes created a barrier as most accessed the internet through their mobile phones. In 2009, Women’sNet conducted focus groups among young men and women aged 15–31 and found that all the young women faced sexual harassment through mobile phone apps, leading them to feel ‘unsafe and uncomfortable’ as well as a ‘lack of freedom’, whereas the young men reported no such experiences (Ramokobala 2009, 108).

As a result, Women’sNet designed a campaign called Keep Your Chats Exactly That, distributing online safety materials, leading workshops in schools to promote the use of mobile phones to prevent rather than enable violence, and encouraging young women to blog with prompts such as, ‘Does gender matter in cyberspace?’ After the filmed gang rape of a teenage girl and subsequent digital dissemination of the video, Women’sNet led a local campaign encouraging social media users to sign Take Back the Tech!’s ‘I Don’t Forward Violence’ pledge,2 and criticised the media for publishing the girl’s photograph and violating victim privacy.

Throughout the year, Girls’Net holds workshops that build capacity in social media use and citizen journalism (news reporting on the internet by the general public). The former Women’sNet project manager, Christy Zinn, described participants as initially unin- formed about rights such as online privacy, but spoke of them as coming out of the work- shops feeling ‘empowered to take ownership of online spaces’ (email to the author, 12 December 2016). She said:

Often the young women who come to our programs don’t feel like they have a voice, or that they can actually say something about what is important to them. We try to encourage young women to speak out and know that they can use the Internet to express their opinions. (Ibid.)

Christy Zinn reported that these young women become more deliberate and effective in their approach to social media, using WhatsApp for conversation and organising, and Facebook for running campaigns on problems such as cyber-bullying. They form Face- book groups, brainstorm issues, and start conversations. One Girls’Net group, for example, grew tired of men and boys policing the clothing of young women, so they devel- oped a campaign around that topic. Like the young women in the Philippines, these girls shared pictures of themselves in clothing that was criticised, and asked other girls what challenges they faced, opening up conversations on posts.

Girls’Net participants connected with girls and young women from other regions of South Africa at an annual camp. According to Christy Zinn, the camp gives participants the opportunity to learn from one another by discovering how other girls approach similar challenges, and to build solidarity by amplifying each other’s voices. This mutual exchange motivates them to stay in touch through mobile phones and the internet, which Christy Zinn described as critical for boosting participants’ self-confidence as they learn new ICT skills and work on their campaigns. She said,

The challenges that we face online are really extensions of the challenges we face in the offline world. Embracing the Internet as a transformative space and being aware of the issues of safety and violence that we are inevitably exposed to is part of a much larger, complex project of tackling

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gender and age inequalities that young women face in South Africa and the world. (Email to the author, 12 December 2016)

Christy Zinn argued that young women and girls in South Africa must not only be able to access the internet but also to ‘embrace the Internet as a transformative space that enables [them] to claim ownership of online spaces’ (ibid.). In doing so, they empower themselves to use their own voices and reinforce those of other girls. Since digital spaces are central to the development of these girls in rural South Africa, it is critical that they are not silenced or pushed off the internet by online GBV. By creating networks of young campaigners, Women’sNet aims to ensure that girls have the support system they need to make the internet their own.

Kenya: ‘Make their voices visible’

Yvonne Olouch quit using Facebook in 2012 due to online harassment, and wanted to know if other women were facing the same problem. While researching online misogyny, she came across Take Back the Tech! and participated in her first campaign in 2014, while developing the idea for Socially Keen Individuals Redefining Tech Spaces (S.K.I.R.T.S.), which won the #incYOUbateIT competition held by AkiraChix and Making All Voices Count (Making All Voices Count 2014). S.K.I.R.T.S. offers training for women and girls in Kenya ‘to control their digital footprints, be aware of online predators, create feminist content that encourages solidarity, and use tech tools to make their voices visible’ (email to the author, 31 October 2016).

A young woman herself, Yvonne Olouch has found that most young women and girls in Kenya love technology but struggle with the pressures it brings. Because ICTs are com- monly used to abuse and humiliate women in Kenya (Onyango 2014), S.K.I.R.T.S. training sessions involve significant discussion of online harassment and body shaming. Yvonne Olouch described the quick spread of information through ICTs as

a double-edged sword, as many young women and girls want fame and recognition through tech, but as this takes effect, other aspects of their lives get exposed as a way to diminish their influence. (Email to the author, 31 October 2016)

In response, S.K.I.R.T.S. organised its first safe space conference in Nairobi in 2016 to encou- rage dialogue and solutions around technology-related GBV. Research has shown that safe spaces for women and girls are a critical strategy for tackling GBV, whether it happens online or offline, because such spaces give them the opportunity to discuss the problems they face as well as possible solutions (Kanja 2015; Martins and Stern 2017; Rafferty 2013).

Yvonne Olouch has found the creation of safe spaces to be a vital part of countering violence, saying:

When you live in a society that doesn’t encourage open thinking and challenging of norms, you tend to grow up feeling timid and not expressing your thoughts, but in a safe space, participants get blown away with our ‘no judgment’ policies. Through openly talking about technology-related violence against women and needed changes, it’s incredible to witness a self-confidence boost amongst everyone. (Email to the author, 31 October 2016)

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Yvonne Olouch also cited survivor solidarity and feminist networking as key strategies. She was struck by the story of a woman who dealt with online violence by starting a trauma centre for women and girls, drawing on the healing value of survivors connecting with survivors (for examples in other contexts, see Katz and Bender 1976; Larance and Porter 2004; Wuthnow 1994). In Yvonne Olouch’s case, networking with other young women and girls has been critical to her own success. She stated,

I have been fortunate to connect and reconnect with other like-minded individuals locally, region- ally and internationally. This has been a great source of support for me to continue with creating safe spaces for all. Collaboration and getting to share ideas and challenges is one way to counter violence. This strengthens the movement and builds solidarity locally. (Email to the author, 31 October 2016)

In capacity-building sessions, S.K.I.R.T.S. has facilitated the development of networks and support groups aiming to ensure young women and girls will ‘embrace technology and make their voices visible and strong’ (ibid.). Once girls have completed training sessions at S.K.I.R.T.S., Yvonne Olouch said that she felt the delight and hope in finally having tools to counter GBV was visible on their faces (ibid.).

They get a sense of security and confidence in having control over the content they want to make available and who has access to it. (Ibid.)

In the first #SafeSpace Digital Security training, which S.K.I.R.T.S. facilitated at Multi- media University in Nairobi, students brainstormed solutions. These ranged from legis- lation to stop online GBV, to improving network security infrastructure, and designing mobile apps to transform online behaviour. One app idea was AchaAibu, or Stop Embar- rassing Yourself, which targeted internet trolls (internet users who deliberately post pro- vocative or negative messages or comments) on social media, informing them that online violence will not be tolerated.

Supporting young women to design their own solutions to online GBV is one of the aims of Take Back the Tech! campaigns. Women in general are poorly represented in internet governance (Olouch 2015; Smita 2017) and ICT development (Radhakrishnan 2017), but Take Back the Tech! and local campaigners like Yvonne Olouch encourage women to use their knowledge and tech skills to create the change they need.

India: ‘A spirit of activism’

In 2015 in Bangalore, India, Radhika Radhakrishnan was making Check Your Privilege, a documentary video about consent, when a friend connected her to the Take Back the Tech! request for survivor stories. Because the campaign’s work to make women’s stories heard and connect those women to a broader community appealed to her, she submitted her video, which was ultimately featured on the global campaign site. In the discussion she had with me for my research, Radhika Radhakrishnan told me,

[T]his happened around the same time that I was doing a lot of writing about feminism. I noticed that when you write articles, there is only one demographic that reads them, but when you get crea- tive with technology, you get better outreach. (Discussion with the author, 15 November 2016)

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She had decided at pre-university level that she wanted to learn more about technology, but at that time she was the only girl in a dozen students. Even in Bangalore, the IT hub of India, she noted there is a perception that technology is for men and boys. She graduated in engineering and computer science, and is now an ICT researcher. She stated,

I appreciate the power of technology in helping people imagine new possibilities. But I have also realised that women are being left behind in this revolution. (Ibid.)

Radhika Radhakrishnan noted in our discussion that although women and girls in Banga- lore do not have the same ICT opportunities as men and boys, those who do have access are making good use of it. She had informally surveyed young women in her community and found that they use digital technology for everything from tracking their menstrual periods to blogging, and felt that internet access gives them greater freedom as they are able to overcome some of the cultural norms that subject them to violence and restrict their behaviour. She described how they use apps like Safetipin and SafeCity, which crowdsource (obtain ideas and content from other internet users) data to inform users about safer travel routes through urban environments. She also described how these young women had told her the SOS emergency button on taxi service apps makes them feel safer – as one click sends the location of the taxi to pre-selected friends and allows them to track its progress. Because girls and young women in Bangalore often face pressure to be home before dark, Radhika Radhakrishnan sees apps for safer commutes as an opportunity to replace protectionist approaches to girls’ safety with empowering strategies, but she pointed out the need for young women to make new tech tools themselves.

When our discussion turned to campaigning, Radhika Radhakrishnan told me that she favours Take Back the Tech!’s strategies of combining online and offline action and tailoring campaigns to local contexts. She leads campaign activities with the Gender and Sexuality Forum, which she founded when a student, to connect young women with different identities and to provide a safe space where they could find solutions. However, she argued that it is through the internet that young women in restrictive environments are learning to build solidarity and take action, with anonymity being a critical strategy for those who join support groups on Facebook or speak out against harassment on Twitter.

Women-run online media in India have been successful at pushing back against gender norms that enable GBV. Radhika Radhakrishnan cited two online platforms, The Ladies Finger and Feminism in India, as integral to young women’s activism. In 2016, Feminism in India ran a Take Back the Tech! campaign based on their research, revealing that women in India lack the support and understanding to respond to online abuse effectively (Pasricha 2016). Their campaign, #DigitalHifazat,3 asked women to share their stories in a variety of media forms.

Nisha Susan, of The Ladies Finger, was instrumental in the Pink Chaddi campaign (Intel 2012), where women sent pink underwear, or chaddis, to a right-wing group that had attacked women at a pub and who promised to marry unwed couples on Valentine’s

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Day. In an interview with Movements.org, Nisha Susan states, ‘There was a stimulus to bring people together around something, but what was really great was that it was then stimulating new discussions and networking was happening for all sorts of things once people were connected’ (Intel 2012).

In fact, the Pink Chaddi campaign has become a case study in how young women can effectively utilise the internet for collective campaigning. However, Radhika Radhakrish- nan pointed out that online activism does not have to achieve its stated or initial goal(s) to be successful. She said:

While I think there is a long way to go in creating a safe space for women and marginalised groups, such campaigning is empowering in itself, by helping many women find a voice and solidarity. (Email to the author, 15 November 2016)

A thousand miles away, Gayatri Buragohain had already been thinking about feminism and technology, when she attended a session led by Jac SM Kee on how women’s rights organisations could use ICTs to further their work. Gayatri Buragohain became part of the initial Take Back the Tech! network and, in 2007, she left her job to focus on founding Feminist Approach to Technology (FAT) in Delhi. FAT (2016) has a stated mission to ‘empower women by enhancing women’s awareness, interest, and participation in tech- nology’. FAT’s programming has since spread beyond Delhi to the states of Gujarat, Jhark- hand, and Bihar. Buragohain told me that in designing the programmes, she asked herself,

How can we use technology education as a way of empowering girls to speak up and fight for their rights within their families, within their communities, and beyond? (Face-to-face conversation with the author, 13 December 2016)

The answer she came up with was to first focus on girls as users, infusing basic computer training with lessons on women’s rights and activism. Because many girls living in Delhi have no access to computers or mobile phones, FAT began working with urban poor girls between the ages of 15 and 25 by offering free computer education within a women’s rights framework, which appealed to girls who knew that such skills were critical for getting a job. Gayatri Buragohain stated that those eager to join now say,

We know that girls who go to the center become confident and learn how to do what they want to do, and we want that for ourselves. (Email to the author, 13 December 2016)

In training a new generation of experienced and tech-savvy activists, Gayatri Buragohain said she has found that what works best is to let girls ‘play with technology’ (ibid.) in a supportive environment, and to talk to them about the women who have been central to ICT development, despite their lack of public recognition.

You talk about the history of technology and how women have been sidelined. This is what breaks their self-doubt and builds their spirit. They learn to question every stereotype. (Ibid.)

At the end of the training, Gayatri Buragohain said she had found that the girls had devel- oped ‘a spirit of activism’ (ibid.) and wanted more, so she created another training level, focusing on girls as creators and teaching them how to make digital content for

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campaigning. Their first campaign, in 2013, was Apna Haq, or Our Right, which targeted lack of safe access to clean toilets. Twenty girls worked collaboratively to make a film and to organise community screenings and discussions. The campaign generated toilet repairs, the removal of usage fees for girls, a decrease in harassment, improved safety through the addition of streetlights and CCTV cameras, and community respect for the girls involved. The girls documented their process in a second film, enabling others to learn from their success, which is a key part of ICT-related activism (Haché and Franco 2011; Kee 2006). In 2015, a group of 31 girls launched a second campaign on early and forced mar- riage, creating a film comprising the stories of five girls, in addition to a radio show, photo book, short play, song, and campaign slogans. Through screenings and discussions, the content reached thousands in Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Bihar.

Outside these campaigns, FAT participants have made videos on a variety of sub- jects, including street harassment. Gayatri Buragohain noted that FAT was especially eager to address this topic. However, the one subject they had not developed a video for was physical and sexual abuse within families. Gayatri Buragohain stated that bring- ing their families into the narratives on girls’ rights, even in a positive manner, has led to additional harassment and abuse for some participants. She highlighted that in this way, the technology that enables girls to demand their rights can also be a threat, which means they must think critically about how they use it and what boundaries they push. However, her view was that this can be overcome through subtle activism, as they learn to negotiate different spaces and create room for themselves. FAT’s staff have been careful to balance the benefits of ICTs with the downsides, and the girls do most of their campaigning offline rather than joining the Take Back the Tech! network online, which can be a riskier environment due to the wide audience. However, they are able to connect with girls and young women across India through FAT’s exposure visits; they visit other organisations, arrange workshops and film screenings, and engage in meaningful dialogue.

After campaigning, the girls were hungry for more leadership roles around women’s rights so FAT created internships and fellowships that focus on girls as decision-makers. Fellows go into their communities to organise training and facilitate discussions around technology and women’s rights. Buragohain said that by the time girls finish the programme,

they know how to negotiate what they want, whether it is ending violence or gaining economic opportunities. (Email to the author, 13 December 2016)

Many participants have even gone on to generate income from their new skills. Crucially, it seems from the case studies shared here that young women and girls in

India are exploring their rights and developing digital skills, but along the way they are also building a movement. Like Radhika Radhakrishnan in Bangalore who is using her expertise in gender and technology to train other young women, the girls in FAT’s work- shops are using their newfound skills and passion to build the capacity of their peers. How- ever, whereas young women in Bangalore can network and organise online, marginalised girls in Delhi and nearby states use digital tools often without the luxury of the internet.

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Campaign lessons learned

‘Power and capacity’

Common themes emerge from these different campaigns: safe spaces, girls and young women expressing their lived realities, solidarity, and developing strategies and solutions to online GBV. It is clear that younger generations are engaging positively with the global campaign while addressing problems in their local contexts, but the case studies also reveal lessons for how Take Back the Tech! can better support girls and young women in cam- paigning. Some of these lessons are outlined below.

First, it is important to encourage year-round engagement: all of the interviewees work with participants throughout the year, regardless of what the global Take Back the Tech! campaign is doing. While they may tie lessons to the global campaign’s 16 Days of Activism activities in late November through mid-December, or join the global campaign at that time, they take action as it suits them and they often maintain educational and networking oppor- tunities year round, a valuable lesson for new campaigners working with girls.

The case studies emphasise a common focus around building capacity around ICTs, women’s rights, and activism. Gayatri Buragohain suggested that Take Back the Tech! offers workshops on simplified online security tied to feminist activism, and then builds the capacity of grassroots organisations to provide follow-up support. Radhika Radhak- rishnan saw a need for an informal mentorship or fellowship system, where activists can ‘engage with girls in their communities to spread key messages from Take Back the Tech! campaigns’ (email to the author, 13 December 2016). Such inter-generational work can ensure that campaigns are built around girls’ experiences and that new cam- paigners have a support system as their activism grows. In terms of reaching FAT partici- pants who campaign offline but not online, Gayatri Buragohain recommended assisting the girls in developing actions that speak to their local needs and consider their risks, rather than expecting them to take part in global actions.

Another important strategy was to create a safe space for young campaigners to inter- act: while the case studies show that girls and young women are connecting locally and regionally within their countries, they are not necessarily networking with young cam- paigners in other countries. They need a shared communication platform, accessible through mobile phones, where they can exchange ideas and support without fear of online GBV. This step is fundamental to increasing solidarity and building a movement.

Finally, since Take Back the Tech! encourages girls and young women to use technology to develop solutions to online GBV, it is essential to recognise the risks and the potential pitfalls of such work, and guidance for policymakers would be useful. For example, although legislation can be vital, criminalisation of certain acts can be problematic, especially in countries with high levels of corruption in the justice system, prison abuses, and censorship (for examples, see Kee and van der Spuy 2015; Women’s Legal and Human Rights Bureau, and Association for Progressive Communications 2015). Apps could unin- tentionally increase vulnerabilities, and other solutions to online GBV could backfire and punish the girls themselves for their self-expression. Discussion around effective solutions is necessary.

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Concluding thoughts

Thanks to the transformative power of ICTs, girls and young women in the Philippines, South Africa, Kenya, and India are engaging in knowledge and capacity building, serious analysis, networking, media making, and campaigning for change around online GBV and gender norms. They are creators and change makers who find creative ways to tell their stories. In her seminal 2006 paper, Jac SM Kee argues:

When women have the power and capacity to tell their own stories, and do so in voluminous amounts, the diversity in their experiences and priorities will be evident. ICTs are able to facilitate the telling of these experiences, whether by documentation or organisation, only if they can mean- ingfully be owned by women. This means the ability to access, develop and control the technology. (Kee 2006, 31)

Undoubtedly, there is more work to be done to ensure that younger generations of women are helping to shape the narrative around GBV and fully enjoying their rights. Despite gendered challenges to ICT access and development, girls and young women are ‘taking back’ the tech in a way that offers hope for anyone who is pessimistic about the future of this increasingly digital world or about the state of human rights. Whether creating apps and short films, or developing dialogue and supportive spaces, young women and girls are negotiating complex territory to make the internet, and the world, their own.

Notes

1. See http://ph.tbtt.apc.org/mapit/ (last checked 15 April 2018). In 2011, Take Back the Tech! used the Ushahidi crowdsourcing tool to create a global map of incidents of technology-related violence against women and worked with local partners, including Foundation for Media Alternatives, to develop country-specific maps.

2. See www.takebackthetech.net/take-action/2011/02/25 (last checked 15 April 2018). 3. See https://feminisminindia.com/2016/11/16/digitalhifazat-campaign-cyber-violence-women-

india/ (last checked 15 April 2018).

Notes on contributor

Sara Baker is a writer, activist, and nonprofit consultant. She works for the Association for Progressive Communications as the global co-ordinator of Take Back the Tech! Postal address: PO Box 29755, Melville 2109, South Africa. Email: [email protected]

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