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Dear friends<br>
<br>
In order to ensure a strong presence for gender equality agenda in the
IGF deliberations, some of us did discuss how it would be good to meet
on the first day of the IGF. <br>
<br>
The purpose of this meeting is to discuss how we can submit a statement
from the Dynamic Coalition on Gender with signatures from
organisations and individuals committed to gender equality. A draft of
this statement that is still being shaped, is attached below. We can
firm it
up through inputs from a wider group.<br>
<br>
Other strategies to track and to input gender perspectives in the
various sessions that all of us may attend during the 4 days of the IGF
can also be discussed.<br>
<br>
The meeting will be held in room No. 7 at 5.30 PM on the 3rd of
December.<br>
<br>
Please do pass this information along.<br>
<br>
Best regards<br>
<br>
anita<br>
<br>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> <br>
</o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><u>Draft Statement to
be submitted to the IGF from the Dynamic Coalition on Gender<o:p></o:p></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><u><o:p><span
style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></o:p></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><u>(This first draft –
Nov 27<sup>th</sup> 2008 - will incorporate additional inputs and be
restructured)<o:p></o:p></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Internet represents for a majority of the
world’s women,
an enabling paradigm that can guarantee not merely their communication
rights,
but also expand their basic capability rights. Access to the Internet
is
necessary because it is a precondition to enjoying human rights (as a
recent
OECD document exhorts). For women especially from marginalized
communities, it
is the harbinger of citizenship rights – bridging their right to be
informed
with the duty of governance institutions to inform.<span style=""> </span>This
means that provisioning of the Internet
is a fundamental social policy issue, a basic guarantee that all
citizens need
to enjoy in an increasingly global society. Women’s access, which is
thus a
citizenship issue, is linked first to availability and then to
affordability.
Both these issues in their present frameworks constrain women’s right
to the
Internet. It is the responsibility of the state to address Internet
access as a
basic citizenship issue without losing perspective of the core
philosophy of
access or engaging in an unending search for the right business model.
Just
like women’s rights to education, health and livelihoods cannot be
bartered in
the name of revenue models or public-private partnerships, so also,
their right
to the Internet cannot be marginalized in the befuddling rhetoric on
the right
business models. Women know how markets work in their favour and how
they do
not. After all, they are subsidizing the failures of the market all
over the
world. It would therefore be a travesty of gender justice to position
access as
an economic issue rather than as a social and political one, for which
the
solution is not the market, but appropriate global, sub-global,
national and
local policies.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Much is being lost in imagining women’s access and
their
right to access as individual<span style=""> </span>rights
alone. The Internet is not only about the virtual space that
individuals
navigate for their ‘online’ relationships. It is a framework of social
intercourse / interaction that alters <i style="">how</i>
we transact relationships. This means that connectivity and access are
more
like issues of forests and lakes more than a private water source or
lawn in
our homes. Therefore, Internet availability must be seen as a means for
social
solidarity of women, a means for them to share their perspectives, a
platform
to come together and a space for participating in governance. The
virtual is
thus more about the real than is understood. Visions of incremental
inclusion
are fundamentally flawed. There can never be an Internet for the next
billion
and then the next and the next. The rights of a miniscule few cannot
hold the
rights of the majority to ransom.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The technical governance of the Internet must not
undermine
the public domain. The proprietisation of knowledge and its
commercialization
runs counter to the rights of communities, especially indigenous
peoples. The
Internet is becoming the means of asserting IP and divesting knowledge
of all
communitarian and public value upon which the daily lives of the vast
majority
of women rests.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Open Internet architecture and open standards are
the
fundamental building blocks to promote an equitable knowledge society.
While
traditional knowledge systems have devalued women’s knowledge, the
Internet era
presents a never before opportunity for women’s central participation
in
knowledge systems, a right that cannot be foregone in the increasing
proprietisation
and commercialization of the Internet.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Women’s participation in governance processes,
national and
global, is contingent upon Internet access. Their ability to assert
rights
beyond national territories and shape human rights debates and
development
alternatives rests on unmediated collaborations of trust that cannot
happen in
a context where the Internet is increasingly controlled by states and
corporations. Many women risk their lives to share information about
injustices
on the Internet. Controls on the Internet endanger not just their
privacy but
their very lives. For women in war and conflict, under state
repression,
suffering displacement etc, the right to communicate is predicated upon
the
ecology of trust they can build through the Internet.<span style=""> </span>Encroachment
of the egalitarian nature of the
internet is not just an issue of the transgression of individual
privilege; it
is a threat to the foundations of global community building and global
justice
movements such as for gender justice.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Internet can make the good governance
proposition better
by making institutions work for women. The consequence of women’s lack
of
capability to make claims at the local level and seek entitlements from
the
state can be devastating for women. Policies need to ensure that global
and
national institutions reach out to women by putting out information,
which is a
prerequisite for making entitlements a reality.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The convenient displacement of the agenda of
information and
knowledge autonomy within the rubric of trade negotiations needs urgent
reconsideration
as the Internet becomes more and more significant in defining knowledge
paradigms for the developing world through. Information and knowledge
comprise a
rights agenda directly and centrally, implicating Internet governance.
The IGF
needs to take note of its duties and privileged position to protect the
rights
of the most marginalized as shrill exhortations from developed
countries for the
completion of the Doha round emerge as a solution to resurrect the
failed
global economy. This is a distraction that prevents policy coherence
around
public interest concerns of the majority. Women refuse to believe as
does the
dominant technical governance establishment of the Internet that the
world is a
market-place. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Diversity – an issue with deep social meanings has
been
coopted by market-oriented approaches to the Internet. Hegemonies of
language,
content, software, and of values about information access and sharing
on the
Internet, for instance, find unequivocal encouragement in the
unabashedly economic
meanings that are emerging on the Internet.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Not only is access central to realizing the
dramatic
increase in the possibilities for women’s representation in public life
but it
is equally vital for democratizing<span style="">
</span>knowledge about development. Policy regimes need to find ways to
support
publicly funded infrastructure and content and promote community
created
content on the Internet. This does happen in <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>
through regulation. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Proceeding from a citizenship framework, the
governance of
the Internet implicates many rights of central concern to women – the
right to
know and freely use knowledge; right to Internet access – the notion of
‘universal access’ in relation to the Internet and<span style=""> </span>conditions
for its effective use; right to
public information (in a digital environment); cultural rights and the
right to
development;<span style=""> </span>right to bodily integrity
and freedom from trafficking; right to livelihood (and freedom from
market
fundamentalism) etc.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We find it disturbing that the fact of the digital
gender
divide is used to recommend leapfrogging to mobile networks or a
harking back to
‘old’ technologies like radio. While appropriate technologies are
crucial for
realizing women’s participation in development and communication
rights,
women’s equal citizenship in the information society cannot obtain
without
equal access to the Internet. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even among developed nations, research shows that
the differences
between men and women for Internet access are consistently higher than
for
computer access – these findings are again generally consistent with a
gender
gap that increases with newer technologies. The relationship between
the gender
divide and the overall digital divide is at best very tenuous. The
gender
divide cannot be simplistically expected to improve as overall
Infostates
improve.<span style=""> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The IGF cannot have addressed its mandate to
strive towards
a dialogue on an “equitable information society”,<span style=""> </span>unless
gender is centrally and squarely
placed within its policy related efforts.</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
anita gurumurthy
IT for Change
Bridging Development Realities and Technological Possibilities
(In Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council)
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.ITforChange.net">www.ITforChange.net</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.IS-Watch.net">www.IS-Watch.net</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://India.IS-Watch.net">http://India.IS-Watch.net</a>
Tel:+91-80-2665 4134, 2653 6890
Fax:+91-80-4146 1055
</pre>
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