Access to knowledge and gender
This edition of GenderIT looks at the question of access to knowledgei focussing on Africa. Over the last century, copyrighti and patents legislation have penetrated into most countries, strengthened by international trade agreements, and often pressure from the United States. This has had the impact of both shrinking the amount of knowledge that is freely available, and of legislating what is and is not 'knowledge'. This has been happening at a time when it is becoming easier and cheaper to copy and transmit information – so despite these increasingly powerful laws, and driving these laws, piracy and file-sharing challenge corporate control of culture. Even in the bastion of copyright legislation, the United States, efforts to enforce legislation over people engaged in peer-to-peer sharing has been unsuccessful.
Access to knowledge issues tend to focus on the legal terrain of copyright and patent law, and related movements such as the CopyLefti movement, the Creative Commons and the free and open source softwarei movement. Questions raised in this issue will be how the expansion of copyright and patent law – geographical, in terms of duration and in terms of what is covered – have been addressed by women's movements, and how the commons movement has, or has not, engaged with women's concerns on control of and access to knowledge, including traditional knowledge. Other issues include gender disparity in terms of access to knowledge, the gender-blind nature of legislation on access to knowledge, and lack of access to decision-making on access to knowledge issues both at the local and international level, in both governmental and non-governmental arenas.
However, while copyright is expanding in scope, the practical limits of enforcement of copyright legislation are being challenged by digitisation, and its offshoot, piracy. The impact of this on cultural rights and minorities, on the spread of knowledge (including access to pirated software for non-profit organisations), on the open source movement and on the spread of information that can be harm or help improve the status of women is still being explored. For example, pirated software can enable groups to have access to technology they could otherwise not afford, but often the same groups involved in the piracy of software are involved in the making and distribution of pornography for male consumers.
This issue focuses on Africa, but includes a couple of articles from other regions. It's an area of both law and lived experience that is changing rapidly and having a marked impact on women and they control they have over their bodies, their health and their heritage, and we invite you to take part in this evolving debate.
