Asia

Patriarchal control on digital access in Sri Lanka continues to keep women away from opportunities and connections, creating a sense of alienation amongst them. Zinara Rathnayake discusses how family restrictions on the ownership and usage of the internet and smartphones impact Sri Lankan women.

Sexism, misogyny and homophobia bars women and gender-diverse folks' access to the internet in Myanmar, leading to violence to continue to perpetuate without any repercussions for perpertrators. In this podcast, Nandar talks to a digital security expert about experiences of vulnerable people on the internet.

A short comic on the anxieties of sharing yourself and your work online, and how one has to commodify all aspects of themselves online, which can open doors to unwanted risks and online hate.

Owing to the constantly increasing threats to their safety, women and LGBT+ folks struggle to have a sense of privacy on the internet in Pakistan. Finstas, or fake Instagram, provides them a safe space for their self-expression. Momina Mindeel explores the serious repercussions of privacy violations, and the 'need' for finstas.

In Iran, women are protesting to demand bodily autonomy and their right to live, in the wake of the state-backed murder of a 22-year-old Mahsa Amini by the morality police. The government is responding by killing more women, attacking protestors and censoring the internet to contain the information.

The research shows that the introduction of technology brings with itself the same problems that haunt other sectors of platform-mediated gig work. On-demand platforms seek to exert control over most points of the service delivery process, including job distributions, client selection, worker pay and performance evaluation, all the while relegating workers to an independent contractor status…

Between August 2018 and October 2020, APC’s partners carried out this regional survey related to sexuality on the internet in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. This publication is based on the country regional surveys conducted in local languages by EROTICS partners and focal points.

When countries invoke peripheral laws such as pharmaceutical violations or conscientious objection clauses as justification for blocking, restricting, or limiting abortion access, they are invariably creating additional barriers, not upholding legal integrity.

COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spike in gender-based violence in India. Helpline numbers and digital tools have been used to reach out to survivors, given the absence of physical services. But those women who cannot use phones, email or social media are most likely to be entirely excluded from these systems.

This piece was written as a part of a CIS project.

The Signs in Ourselves is an illustrated publication that documents in depth lived experiences of 12 queer Muslims from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, while also sharing snapshots of experiences from queer Muslims across the world.