Feminist talk

The (mobile) games women play

Posted Fri 21 Oct 2016 - 05:33 | 7,897 views
Games on mobile phones are often a disregarded area of study, because it is relatively cheap and less glamorous than video games. But global consumer spending on mobile gaming in 2015 was estimated to be worth 34.8 billion dollars, and there have been several reports talking about how India is on the ‘verge of a mobile gaming boom’. What the numbers often fail to mention is that a large chunk of…

Publication

Mobile Phone: A Public Tool (Civic Participation, Education and Health)

Posted Thu 20 Oct 2016 - 13:01 | 6,265 views
This study led by Digital Empowerment Foundation analyses 14 projects that are active in India in the arena of civic participation, education and health, and examines its impact on women stakeholders. One of the objectives is to understand how mobile phones are benefiting women frontline workers (teachers, auxiliary nurses) and mothers; however, the study's main findings are that accessibility…

Feminist talk

We can't do it alone: Connections at AWID 2016

Posted Thu 6 Oct 2016 - 13:02 | 38,444 views
In such massive gatherings often the plenary session rings a bit empty or hollow, like background noise to other more real conversations taking place. AWID was different in that its massive burst of energy and radical politics was most often from the plenary sessions. This article explores the sessions at AWID held by Dalit women, Romani women, Rojava/Kobane women, and others.

Feminist talk

[COLUMN] The Gender Binary: Thank you!

Posted Thu 22 Sep 2016 - 05:20 | 5,854 views
The word Impostor keeps coming up every time a trans woman writes about herself. It is there, just below the surface, despite all the estrogen and progesterone, under all the skin-colour foundation and pink lipstick and shiny earrings. It is behind the pads on our breast, cushioning the tender nipples. The feeling, and the word - impostor. We are impostors when we try to be us, and when we try to…

Feminist talk

I delete myself: anonymity and sexuality online

Posted Tue 23 Aug 2016 - 04:26 | 9,476 views
The fact that the Internet allows women to be anonymous has greatly aided in increased freedom of expression as well as in combating sexual discrimination, violence as well as domestic abuse. Even with the points in favour of right to anonymity being far and wide, it is not seen as a priority in many countries. Human rights activists and the civil society are only beginning to acknowledge that…

Feminist talk

Women's safety? There is an app for that

Posted Thu 19 May 2016 - 07:36 | 12,328 views
There are myriad mobile phone apps meant to be deployed for personal safety, but technical wizardry perhaps makes it easy to lose sight of the fact that technology is not a saviour but a tool or an enabler. Technology alone cannot be the panacea of a problem that is deeply complex and, in reality, rooted in society and governance.

Publication

Keeping women safe? Gender, online harassment and Indian law

Posted Sun 1 May 2016 - 12:28 | 6,877 views
Findings of the Internet Democracy Project research study, ‘”Don’t Let It Stand!”: An Exploratory Study of Women and Verbal Online Abuse in India’, indicate that women in India develop a variety of strategies to deal with the verbal threats they face. However, these strategies very rarely include the law,resulting in a silence around questions of legal effectiveness and recourse for online verbal…

Feminist talk

Of Porn, Morality and Censorship: A Perspective from India

Posted Wed 10 Jul 2013 - 11:51 | 15,956 views
Filed in April 2013, a legal petition that calls for a ban on pornography on account of its linkage to sexual violence in India has raised several eyebrows and debates within the country. This piece written by Richa Kaul Padte explores the context for this proposed legislation, the social and legal cultures in which it sits, and its implications for internet censorship within India.

Publication

Women and online abuse in India: Submission to Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women

Posted Wed 8 May 2013 - 12:20 | 5,969 views
In the Indian context, the internet has played a critical role in opening up rights for women on one side of the digital divide, giving them access to vital (at times, life altering) information and an opportunity to exercise (some for the first time) their right to free speech and expression through platforms such as blogs, micro blogs and social media. However, as in their lives offline, in the…

Feminist talk

‘Choli ke peeche kya hai?’: censorship and pornography

Posted Mon 25 Mar 2013 - 07:20 | 9,943 views
The discourse of censorship is well-known to most people, as India’s right-wing moral brigades routinely flock to the streets to prevent everything from item numbers in Bollywood films to sex education posters in trains to the greeting-card shop Archies (for its ‘promotion’ of Valentine’s Day) from going ahead. But what does this mean for freedom of speech and expression in the country? And more…