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They come from rural areas of the poorest region in Brazil. Until a few months ago, their routine was to wake up before the sun rises, work in the crops, cut sugar cane and work at home at night in household chores. Now, they have a new activity to dedicate themselves: to learn to use a computer and navigate in the Internet. And to speak up.

Information communication technologies (ICTs) have broken sharia compliances as the women farmers in Nigeria learned how to make their own video films and also take still pictures. However african women continue to face tough challenges in their battle to get their voices and concerns heard in development matters, as revealed a case study of women farmers of Kano in Nigeria presented by Salamatu…

"Although the women’s movement has adopted ICTs in their work as an important tool, it has given little attention to ICT policies". This and many other issues were discussed in the workshop “Networking for Change and Empowerment: Building a Feminist Agenda for ICT Policies” that APC Women’s Networking Support Programme and APC LAC ICT Policies Monitor organised during the World Social Forum, in…

The UN Secretary-General's report (E/CN.6/2010/2) in preparation for the 54th Commission on the Status of Women who undertook the 15 year review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (BpfA), including the section J – Women and Media. Media and ICT are mentioned throughout the Report as important tools for awareness raising and information dissemination, for example, under the…

A regional analysis on the status of women 15 years after the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The report maps out the progress, gaps and challenges under each of the critical areas of concern in the West, Eastern and Southern sub-regions, with emphasis on the period since the last review in 2004 (Beijing +10). For example, the report argues ,that the ICTs have…

As the international community prepares to join the United Nation’s 49th Session of the Commission on the Status on Women (CSW), women media practitioners are asking: where is women’s “J” spot? Commonly known as “Beijing +10,” the role of the official UN session is to evaluate what governments have done to implement the Platform for Action (PFA) of the Fourth World Conference on Women 10 years…

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the consideration of gender issues in all research on radio, convergence and development in Africa. It is intended to guide the deliberations at our Butare roundtable (September 2009) discussion on a research agenda and to ensure that we put gender considerations front and centre as we design our research plans.

Lucy Niño and Lida Nuñez look at how the Colombian government has paid special attention to ICT policies, offering ICT literacy programmes and ICT inclusion in marginalised areas, while at the same time ICTs are used to promote prostitution and pornography produced in the country via the internet and cellphones. Government has produced a campaign to foster a “healthy use” of internet and to…

Jac SM Kee and Sonia Randhawa highlight forms of VAW that have received recognition in Malaysia and provide the context of ICT development and national policy objectives in this paper. It is not an exhaustive assessment of the current state of VAW, but rather aims to surface some of the interconnections between ICT issues and VAW and areas of potential opportunities for advocacy, as well as…

This article examines the relationships that exist between gendered access to education and the ways in which mobile phones, fixed phones, and the Internet are perceived and used in a rural and an urban Bhutanese community. The findings, organized by levels of literacy, reveal similar patterns in ICT perceptions and use across the two communities.