India

Imagine the life of an Indian gender or sexuality rights activist. What work do they do? Who do they interact with? What threats do they face? Here are some snapshots (created by participants).

The internet is an important part of many of our daily lives, work and activism - but how many of us actually understand what it is? Beyond mechanics, questions around who governs the internet are key to contextualising the struggle for rights - including sexuality rights - online.

Within the arena of ‘women, sexuality and the internet’, the usual suspects of pornography, indecency, and non-consensual videography are often the first topics that come to mind. But women aren’t just subjects on the internet – they are users, too. A presentation at the EROTICS India workshop overturned some common assumptions by highlighting experiences of women online.

Bringing together sexual rights activists, women’s groups and internet activists, the first EROTICS India workshop – organised by Point of View, APC (Association for Progressive Communications) and the Internet Democracy Project - explored the relationship between sexual rights activism, sexuality, and the Internet. Focusing on issues ranging from rights to security to advocacy, the workshop…

EROTICS – which stands for Exploratory Research on Sexuality and ITCs (same as ICTs)- is a global project that attempts to explore how marginalized sections are using the Internet and the ICTs, at large, to assert their sexual rights. The India chapter - #EROTICSIndia - was organised in Delhi recently by the Internet Democracy Project in collaboration with South Africa based APC and Point of View…

In the submission, the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) is particularly concerned with making the internet an effective tool to exercise rights to information in India. DEF believes that the internet plays a major role in accessing information and thus a tool for social and economic development. This submission outlines India’s progress and specific areas of concern: information technology…

Manjima Bhattacharjya and Maya Ganesh, the India partner of the APC's EroTICs Project, open their input with the evocative lyrics of a Swedish pop group ABBA: “And I can chat with you baby / Flirt a little, maybe / But does your mother know that you’re out ?” This article is about middle-class women digital natives in Mumbai, the city with the highest internet use in India, and the initial…

Like bright flowers in a grey space, the grassroots women of India livened up February’s Prepcom proceedings and it wasn’t just their stylish saris that did the trick. Undaunted by the suits and officialdom of Geneva’s UN machinery, these Indian representatives vigorously demonstrated the value of ICTs in their working lives and made a cogent case for finances to build more equitable ICT…

Namita Malhotra examines in this paper, the discourse of pornography in relation to the internet in India. She interrogates the Indian women's movements negotiation with issues around sexuality and censorship, as well as the various legislative, cultural, and ethical debates that intersect around this issue in recent years.

The paper explores to what extent the women in the Indian State of Chhattisgarh have been able to access and to use e-governance initiatives, as compared their male counterparts, and how far these e-governance initiatives been able to address and include the needs of women.