feminist practices of technology

What is feminist infrastructure? Our lives are determined now by technology and especially data and surveillance. How can we undermine the existing technological hegemony and rebuild infrastructures that accommodate different realities and needs through community networks?

A photo essay of a community network and the women working at the radio station and using the community network located just at the outskirts of Bangalore in India.

This collaborative document lays out the various questions around ethics and feminist methodology. You can use the questions as a guide and reminder for how to integrate ethical dimensions into your research.

For a region like the MENA (which some authors refer to as S/WANA, others as Arabic-speaking countries), tech policy problems are compounded with a litany of daily struggles, most devastating of these being occupation, war, conflict, and displacement which affects, we sometimes forget,…

Habash from Egypt explores the relationship between feminism and blockchain technologies in a curious and critical review of possibilities emergent in DAOs and DisCos. They accompany us through several iterations and thought experiments on political organisation and theory in the realms of web3.

Journalist, Yara el Murr, from Lebanon presents a case study of kotobli, a book discovery platform that counters colonial algorithms used in searching for books about the SWANA region. She details how Big Tech favours publishers and authors from the Global North and presents the challenges and opportunities of working with local publishers and authors to change this.

Open-source advocate from Jordan, Raya Sharbain, makes the case for digital self-defence to support sexual rights and reproductive justice movements amidst growing crackdowns and threats. She elaborates on use of secure and protective technologies to share and access information critical to feminist movements.

AI expert, Nour Naim from Gaza, details the particular challenges of gender and racial bias in algorithms and datasets. In her piece, she presents an overview of important and emerging trends in the movement for trustworthy AI, as well as activist responses to these inequalities.

Tunisian researcher, Afef Abrougui, writes about the perils of AI-enhanced technologies deployed by authoritarian regimes in the region towards increased surveillance and predictive policing. She raises important questions about the readiness of civil society in the MENA to respond to these dangers and what is needed to preserve privacy and human rights in the coming…

For a region like the MENA (which some authors refer to as S/WANA, others as Arabic-speaking countries), tech policy problems are compounded with a litany of daily struggles, most devastating of these being occupation, war, conflict, and displacement which affects, we sometimes forget, two billion people - a quarter of the world’s population. People Like Us are often…