Including gender in privacy and digital security

Context

“Securing Online and Offline Freedoms for Women: Expression, Privacy and Digital Inclusion” is a project coordinated by Tactical Technology Collective and funded by the Swedish International Cooperation Development Agency. The project aims at strengthening a global network of Women Human Rights Defenders and activists delivering advocacy, awareness raising and training to privacy and digital security. Through applied and participative research, adapted curricula and learning resources, training opportunities and support to the base ground activities organised by its participants, the expected outcomes intend to mitigate and tackle the effects of online violence and ICT related threats against women, trans-persons and their collaborators. By training those to act as intermediaries-trainers within their organisations and communities, the project intend to strength freedom of expression and opinion.

As underlined by APC “Technology related violence is a form of Violence Againt Women (VAW) that manifests in the context of new technologies. ICTs can be used to perpetrate violence in a variety of ways. Perpetrators of violence use mobile phones and the internet to stalk, harass and monitor women’s movements and activities”.1 As a result, vocal women are too often trapped in a situation where the Internet is crucial to their work but is also the place where they are surveilled, harassed and punished for speaking out. These trends largely represent an extension of offline prejudices and discrimination and have several real world effects. Overall, they represent a further deterrent to the participation of women and marginalised communities in democratic processes and a severe challenge to their ability to access the public sphere and exercise their fundamental rights. Some of these attacks lead to women removing themselves from the public sphere, avoiding ICTs and to further isolation, in some cases this means moving house, changing jobs, quitting work all together or moving countries. In some instances this has led to severe threats to individuals physical safety and well-being, with law enforcement not providing aid and legal systems failing to meet needs. There is limited systematic documentation and analysis of these incidents, however there is growing recognition as to their prevalence globally and increasing demand for a high level of response. From our own research and direct work with WHRD during the past twelve months, we can confirm that this problem takes the same form across a wide range of change agents in different environments globally. At this stage, what we see in response to these attacks, regardless of the community, is a series of fractured and case-by-case actions and a small number of groups working consistently to raise awareness, document and understand the nature of the problem and seek solutions.

Because those new forms of violence have become more visible and pervasive in the last few years, individuals and organizations are increasingly willing to protect themselves as the overwhelming number of candidatures to our Gender and Technology Institute made clear with over 350 applications submitted in less than three weeks. However, many women and trans-persons still feel that digital security is not for them, because it often fails to take into account their realities and the specific threats they are facing. Moreover, there is a lack of technical confidence and knowhow within priority communities. Currently a large bulk of this expertise has to come from outside and this raises two problems, first a lack of informed and appropriate technical advice and second questions of trust and long-term ownership. WHRD need to feel they are part of the digital security field and that they are not just the recipients of focused trainings delivered by external actors and organisations. By becoming an active part of this extended network of digital security trainers and developers, they are able to build their own technical skills and in home capacities and reach some type of sustainability and multiplier effect across time.

Distance traveled

Our first milestone consisted in the organisation of the Gender and Technology Institute which aimed at funding the participation of women human rights defenders from the global south to a week long training. By gathering all those participants together we also aimed at mapping and documenting existing knowledge and experiences about how to introduce a gender dimension into privacy and digital security.

The Gender and Technology Institute could be achieved thanks to SIDA funding and the APC women programme which also supported the organisation and the funding of a number of participants. Through a process of rigorous review, all applications were pared down to 48 participants. We also had a great group of 18 facilitators, who came from organisations such as SAFE, Protection International, Donestech, as well as APC and Tactical Tech, and adding the logistics team and some visitors, we were about 80 in total.

The mornings were mostly organised along two tracks running in parallel, one on Digital Security Training Skills track for those who already had some tech background but who wanted to hone their training skills, and one on Privacy Advocacy which looked at issues like mass and targeted surveillance, managing digital shadows and online identities and tackling tech-related violence. Afternoons were reserved for hands-on sessions (ie, learning specific tools) and skillshares run by participants, including sessions on wikis and digital libraries, self-doxing, interviewing survivors of violence, feminist servers, self care, self-defense, circumvention tools, regional discussion groups, and others. After dinner the evening programme kicked in, including lots of self-organised, participant-driven sessions: movies, discussion groups, stenciling, board games, creating a 'herstory' exhibition... as well as impromptu dancing and the occasional outbreak of balloon-volleyball. Evenings were also when the self-organised and popular hackerspace got going, which became the go-to place to gain knowledge and share skills around practical tech stuff in a chilled-out atmosphere.

All this brought an intense event with persons passionated by their work and activism around gender social justice, LGTBQ rights, health and sexual rights, internet freedoms, indigenous communities, environmental causes, and it is also important to underline that all participants were also representative of a broad palette of experiences using, adapting and developing technologies for freedom of expression and freedom of opinion.

The Institute enable the creation of a conversation coming from experiences located in 30 different countries about how we could develop practices that enable women, trans-persons and other groups at risk to include privacy and digital security into their lives, and how we could keep on learning meanwhile helping others to learn about those concepts, methods and tools once back home? Recurrently our reduced amount of free time, fragmented and precarious lives and lack of individual and collective self care cultures were pointed at as major challenges to become trainers on the ground. How can we include and pack those fast evolving privacy and digital security practices into our already very busy lives as human rights defenders and activists? How can we find collective mechanisms of support to keep advancing together and empower each other?

First step: Acknowledge gender roles and Violence Against Women along the technological cycle

The following ideas are based on the exchanges maintained during and after the Gender and Technology Institute, and they also relate to the great amount of past and current on-going research, experiences, initiatives and policies that are being developed to overcome specific challenges posed by the interactions between gender and technology. Pear to pear and group learning processes are derivative of the experience gained by participants through the organization of around 50 local activities targeting women and trans-persons in order to raise their awareness and lift up their practices for integrating privacy and digital security in their work though a gender perspective. In a nutshell, we could say that including gender requires to engage with the diversity of cultures, social status, sexual orientations, race, ethnicities and other power structures that create various forms and levels of inequality for individuals and communities into their access to security tools and practices. Enabling enthusiasm from participants for digital security practices encompass an integrated approach linking those to their well being and physical security as human right defenders, to their feminists and queer activism, and by exposing the many invisible contributions that sustain digital security communities, avoiding frustrated expectations, gaining self confidence and losing fear through Do It With Others processes. Accordingly, adapted, updated and targeted resources and training methodologies focusing on specific threats and strengths is required in order to activate curiosity and better understanding.

Gender roles are sets of societal norms dictating what types of behaviors are generally considered acceptable, appropriate or desirable for a person based on their actual or perceived biological sex. These are usually centered around opposing conceptions of femininity and masculinity, although there are myriad exceptions and variations.2 Therefore the first step for including gender consists in acknowledging the gender roles that society attribute to us at birth and during the rest of our lives and that generate stereotypes that can become prejudices. Latter generally results into specific threats and violences against women, queer or non binary persons along the complete technological cycle.

From production of technologies

As Wilding and Fernandez stated in 2002: “We need much more research on the specific impact of ICT on different populations of women whose lives are being profoundly altered by the new technologies, often in ways that lead to extreme physical and mental health problems”3

Electronics and telecommunication industries are highly dependent on low wage workers which often operate from special economic zones known for their antiunion measures. In Malaysia, between 70 and 80% of the workforce of the industry are women which are also often immigrants. In Mexico, it is reported to be 70% of the workforce with women often facing sexual harassment from their direct superiors and being forced to achieve overtime among other systemic violences. Currently, there is a lack of networks and initiatives that can challenge those conditions and reclaim technologies produced and recycled in fair working and environmental conditions. Including gender requires to take into account this context as it clearly constitute a set of structural violences against women.

Access to technologies

The gender gap in relation to access to technologies can be spotted when asking women about their first memory of a technology and how much life distance they traveled until becoming an active user of Information and Communication Technologies. This amount of years between your first memory and when your started to actively use ICT represent your gender time gap in relation to access to technologies. Moreover, the digital divide is still largely happening between urban and rural areas and it is also strongly gendered as current data estimates that there are 200 million less women connected to Internet than men. This lack of access can be caused by a deficient connectivity or inexistent infrastructure, a lack of inclusiveness and usability in the design of the technologies, and it can be also aggravated by discrimination pushing away or forbidding women to access ICT, denying their basic rights to communication, information and knowledge. In that last sense, including gender also requires to understand how different women in different conditions find ways of accessing technologies, even if they are not supposed or supported doing so, and how they can protect themselves and others meanwhile doing it.

Uptake of technologies

When finally uptaking with ICT, you may face violence online because of your gender and/or sexual orientation. As explained by Jeniffer Radloff from the APC women programme: “What is now increasingly obvious is that the Internet and digital tools and spaces have a profound impact on the magnitude of threats and have simultaneously broadened and increased the kinds of surveillance and harassment to which human rights defenders, both men and women, are being subjected. Attacks against women are invariably sexualised and women human rights defenders (WHRDs) are often more at risk online (as they are offline) than their male counterparts. Invariably WHRDs can experience more hostility, and at the same time lower levels of protection, compared to their male colleagues”.4 The problem of online harassment and threats against women and their collaborators, coming from both governments and non-state individuals and groups, has become more visible in the last few years. Vocal women are trapped in a situation where the Internet is crucial for expressing themselves, coordinating actions, gaining wider reach out but it is also a place where they are submitted to surveillance and harassment. The Internet is not a safe space, and it is all too common to see the work of women and activists being blocked, deleted, (self)censored, and in general, actively prevented from being seen, heard or read. Logically, these trends diminish both the freedom of expression and privacy rights of the people targeted. Including gender requires also to tackle those specific gender based online violence and to build capacity on the ground so that women and minorities can protect and strength their freedom of opinion and expression.

Development of technologies

In a 1991 essay, Ellen Spertus examined the influences that discourage women from pursuing a career in a technical field, more specifically in computer sciences. These influential factors range from the different ways in which boys and girls are educated, the stereotypes and subtle biases female engineers face working in predominantly male environments, sexism in language and subconscious behavior that tends to perpetuate the status quo. The lower levels of women in Computer sciences and STEM studies and in related professions within the ICT industry have been intensively studied. There is considerably less literature on the participation of women in ‘free software’ communities and hacking cultures, nor on the introduction of women into software and technologies development thanks to informal learning processes in voluntary and/or activists contexts. Besides that the documentation of women contribution through history to the design and development of technologies is still very scare, anecdotal and often derivative of a negation and invisibility of women roles in those specific histories. This drives in turn to a lack of role models and the impossibility of launching new imaginaries and overcome current stereotypes. Including gender also consists in researching the Her Story and making visible women, trans and queer experiences when working and developing technologies, be those digital ones, or appropriated technologies such as permaculture or heath and self care technologies for instance.

Governance of Internet and ICT

valentina ?? safety and speech work policy lobby IT companies “Reversing individual and collective attitudes that restrict women’s full participation in the benefits of the internet and that perpetuate patriarchal control and abuse is the ongoing work of women’s and social change movements. This work must be focused on democratising cyberspace as well. As in other spheres, from politics to the larger terrain of science and technology, one aspect of changing patriarchal norms and standards is to strive for greater gender balance amongst experts and decision makers in particular fields”.5

To end of life of technologies

Finally, we should not forget about the eWaste dump routes that consist on those areas where electronic waste is shipped, often contradicting the principles settled by the Basel convention6, and that conclude in their abandonment in developing countries where local communities have to take in charge their recycling generally under very poor ecological, social and working conditions. Those places represent the end of life of technologies and another problematic aspect of consumerist and fetishistic approaches to ICT.

This review of the steps composing the technological cycle shows that including gender into privacy and digital security requires first to acknowledge that gender gaps, discrimination and VAW are happening along the process in a structural way and that they influence the conditions of women, trans persons and at risk minorities in relation to their experience of/with ICT. It also shows that when we use technologies we should reflect about how those are liberating or alienating ones for other groups and individuals. Liberating technologies could be defined as appropriated technologies that do not harm, are rooted in the free software and culture principles and are designed by default against surveillance, opacity and programmed obsolescence.

Second step: Shift from exclusion to the inclusion and self inclusion paradigm

For decades, research on gender and technology has highlighted the under-representation of women in technology development. However, behind these figures and the discourses that accompany them, other, hidden situations may appear: on the one hand, the existence of women who do participate and might have been invisible before, on the other the widespread biased assumption that women are not interested or have an innate inability to engage with technology on a deeper level.

Feminist movements of the 60s and 70s were not only the breeding ground for a renewed interest in the issue of women in science but, along with the growing interest in technological development, brought research to focus on women in technology. In the 90’s the growing consolidation of the information and knowledge society and the central role taken on by new information and communication technologies (ICT) in its development led to a proliferation of studies examining socio-demographic differences in the access, use and design of these new technologies. It was then that the gender digital divide became a major problem within the development of technology and the information society per se. Its study has therefore become essential to understanding the old and new dynamics of women's exclusion and inclusion in the development of our societies.

As pointed previously, research on women's involvement in ICT warns that the gender digital divide persists. Women continue to access, use, benefit from and contribute to ICT to a lesser extent than men. In fact, our current gender digital divide includes several digital gender gaps in one. Initially, concerns have focused on the differences in women's possibilities of access to ICT infrastructures and own the basic skills to start using ICT. A second gender digital gap has to do with how we use ICT. That is, inequalities between women and men in the intensity of computer, internet and mobile telephony use, as well as the differences of use women and men give to ICT. In this sense, women still make less frequent and intensive use of ICT than men. Moreover, if we consider the use we give to ICT, it is still distributed in a binary and dichotomous form, heavily related to traditional gender roles. The third gender gap occurs in the areas of advance use as well as design and governance of new technologies, traditionally considered as related to computing and telecommunication engineering degrees and associated job sectors, as well as hacking and making communities.

Researches and policies focused on the exclusion paradigm ask why there are few women in ICT and point to a number of factors that have led to their departure or active and passive discrimination:

History: Women have been traditionally excluded from the study, research and production of technological knowledge through legal and social norms in the past, and still are in many countries nowadays. This discrimination has excluded women and hindered the generation of models for other women, as well as made invisible contributions by women to the development of technology. This has fostered an image that alienates women and results in gender discrimination.

Gender stereotypes and technology: Their influence define what is considered appropriate for women or for men in a binary manner, in this case Technology is associated to men and masculinity, besides marking the conditions of access to prestige, value and recognition. Gender stereotypes are attributed as "natural" and therefore they are highly resistant to change, while being reproduced through family, school, media, social networks or at the workplace.

Unfriendly environments: A masculine culture dominates technological sectors. Technology is associated with men, hegemonic masculinity and their values which imply that ICT learning and working environments tend to be unfriendly to women. For example, ICT working environments show serious deficiencies in the possibilities of balancing work and family life, as well as to fight gender based violence.

Intersectionality: The exclusion of women from ICT is also often aggravated by other forms of social exclusion such as socio-economic status, place of residence and / or socio-demographic factors such as age, ethnic origin or sexual orientation. All this results in discrimination.

The results of these studies have been crucial in echoing the situation of discrimination against women and the male dominance of technology, while identifying a need for public action and generating indicators and data for analysis. However, focusing on exclusion means keeping this issue particularly related to quantities and therefore entails carrying out research using homogenized, narrow definitions of ICT, as well as data that segregates between two biological sexes. Moreover, this research fosters a sense of pessimism and technophobia in the relationship between women and technology. This pessimistic and victimising approach has had significant impact on the message offered to women, the public at large and public decision-makers. In this respect, it has an effect on the development of feminist research itself and distances feminist research from current post-feminist theoretical developments, such as cyberfeminisms or technofeminisms and queer feminisms, with new proposals to be developed theoretically and empirically leaving the door open to critical optimism and gender transformations.

To the inclusion and self-inclusion of women in ICT and the opportunities this brings for all

As pointed out by different researchers to stop exclusion is not the same thing as achieving inclusion. Focusing on exclusion might lead us to believe that inclusion is impossible, when there are actually women who include themselves in ICT and digital inclusion actions and policies that have been effective. Thus, although research on exclusion is the basis for knowing the needs of inclusion, it is not enough to understand the motivations, facilitators, policies or strategies for women's development in ICT. There is a need to shift the question from why women do not access, use, study or work in ICT to the question of why, where and how women have become involved in ICT and have been welcomed to it, in order to learn from the specific inclusion and self-inclusion processes based on the experiences of women already included and their wishes, as well as the analysis of actions for inclusion. In this respect, with a paradigm shift towards inclusion, other presences of women become visible and, moreover, there is a qualitative step forward in understanding how women participate in ICT and ultimately in understanding the relationship between gender and ICT.

Placing inclusion in the centre of our activities becomes more consistent with feminist theories that considers the experiences of women at the heart and point of departure of our reflections. In fact, feminism of technology focusing on the presence and inclusion processes, has brought to light the contributions and uses that women make of ICT and thus have focused on the worlds and experiences of women. With this, role models for many more could be put in the spotlight, as well stereotypes about gender and ICT could be weakened. In this sense, research has also questioned the binary tendency of the study of women in technology, by focusing on women while making visible its diversity and going beyond the dichotomous comparison to men. This has also enable to partially leave behind a debate which has traditionally focused on the amounts and percentages in order to deepen in the quality of the participation of women in ICT. Finally, the inclusion paradigm has also helped to generate new inclusive opportunities for other women and collectives and have made visible alternative developments of ICT. When referring to self-inclusion of women in ICT we position women as agents conducting their own ICT inclusion. This entails considering the agency of women in their process of inclusion, i.e. the mechanisms that themselves activate and/or decide to follow to progress and even to contribute and transform ICT. Self-inclusion then, involves to access, follow, stay, progress, recognize and be recognized, and contribute to ICT.

Self inclusion as learning processes

The main self-inclusion mechanism commonly stated consists of different ways and motivations for learning. However, many women do not learn in formal education nor study engineering, but engage in non-formal and informal learning processes. In addition, as in many other sectors, women seek and access ICT jobs to self-include themselves in ICT. However, due to gender stereotypes women find it difficult to engage in self-promotion. When finding barriers in a given context or seeking new opportunities most of the women have opted for mobility, both occupational (moving to other departments or companies to do a similar job) and geographic (even moving to other countries). Some women even become entrepreneurs to carry out their ideas and projects, alone or with other partners, to maintain and continue their ICT practices, as well as set several self-regulating practices as another mechanism of self-inclusion, such as establishing certain plans and organizations to follow.

Women also build new networks to further progress in ICT and generate new projects, while learning and promoting themselves. In relation to that, they have been collaborating and sharing knowledge but also works, codes and resources that could help and be used by others. Through collective participation women learn, interact, rely, are empowered, or generate new projects as well as new form of inclusion. Sometimes, in addition, they create new groups or events that, on occasions, foster women and technology at the same time.

The need for women’s inclusion in ICT is a question of gender justice and equality. However, there are many other arguments that support an improved inclusion of women in ICT. Increasing women's representation in ICT also increases the pool of skilled IT workers, which nowadays is in high demand. Moreover, they work in sectors with higher pay and prestige and at the cutting edge of current changes. Including women in ICT would also increase the diversity of participant profiles in developing ICT and the information society in general. This would include the voices, perspectives and needs of thousands of potential users, as well as increasing the opportunities for creating new technological products that are more extensive and adaptable to many different profiles while, at the same time, facilitating the development and transformation of the ICT sector itself and society as a whole. Taking all this into account, the shift towards a paradigm of inclusion when approaching gender and ICT is needed in order to orient our research and action towards the opportunities placed and generated when women are doing technologies.

Third step: Adopt an intersectional and integrated (holistic) approach to privacy and digital security

Previous experiences related to gender inclusion have identified a number of auspicious factors facilitating the entrance and immersion of women and minorities groups in technology. First factor identifies the importance of an access to education, resources and infrastructure. Second factor relates to a context perceived as safe and friendly. In this regard, the existence of tools, spaces and contents of interest and/or useful for women is a necessity. Besides, the availability of role models and other mentoring, tutoring and support mechanisms is important as one crucial challenge relates to the sensation of isolation felt by many women and LGTBQ who do not count in their organization or community with a network of support to keep up with their motivation and willingness to learn and engage with privacy and digital security. Because of all this, active encouragement from family, friends, media, school or gender specific public policies have also been stressed. In a nutshell main recommendations for the inclusion of more women into technology and therefore privacy and digital security fields are:

Facilitate women’s access to ICT. For example: encourage your daughter or student, create pedagogical materials for women and ICT, share your mouse and tools with her, and collaborate with collectives that work on equality.

Make visible, create awareness and recognise women’s contributions. For example: Pay attention and visualize women past and present experiences and achievements. Give credit and promote their contributions.

Create gender friendly environments. For example: implement a welcome policy, encourage work-life balance measures, avoid sexist jokes and fight against any type of harassment

Mentor and sponsor: For example: Offer yourself as a mentor and share your collective/company knowledge with her. If an interesting new role is vacant, point to her as a candidate.

Practice Feminims, Let us be and transform: Do not expect what has been traditionally there. Be open to non linear trajectories, to new uses of old tools, other and new ways of doing and even other ways of living femininities and masculinities.

Moreover, our own learning processes and exchanges have also brought deep insights about what stands at the core of a methodological approach for gender inclusion into privacy and digital security making us aware of the importance of adopting an intersectional and feminist approach to technologies, inasmuch as an integrated (holistic) approach to security.

Intersectionnality refers to a corpus of theories and practices that state that oppression within society, such as sexism, racism, biphobia, homophobia, transphobia, and belief-based bigotry, do not act independently of one another. These forms of oppression interrelate, creating a system that reflects the "intersection" of multiple forms of discrimination.7 Intersectionnality goes hand by hand with a gender lens because both require to understand ones privileges in any of the different dimensions of our social lives. The women composing this network have indeed many identities that can relate to their ethnic background, age, geographical location, economical situation, political and inner beliefs, sexual orientation, professional status, mobility capacities and a long list of other elements. Accordingly when assessing the risks they are exposed to and the strengths they have, which constitute the basis of any travel journey towards privacy and digital security, they are required to take into account all those dimensions.

Additionally, the integrated (holistic) security perspective seeks to overcome the unhelpful separation between approaches which focus on digital security, personal/organizational security, and psycho-social well-being. This involves recognizing the effect of stress, fatigue and trauma on activists abilities to engage with 'rational' processes of risk analysis, security planning and skill building in digital security; furthermore, it recognises the impact of new technologies on our ability to accurately perceive indicators of danger and take action to stay safe. Many participants felt that an integrated approach to security made more sense with many of the groups thez were trained on the ground such as indigenous groups, women in rural and poor areas, LGTBQ, sex and health activists, anti mining and environmental activists, journalists and community champions. An integrated approach enable participants to think about how threats related to each others and which security practices help them to transform their loneliness and individual fears into collective strategies to overcome dangers and creating protection among the members of a connected network.

Because privacy and security are the outcomes of a constant tension between individual practices and collective ones, you are as secure as the least secure member of your network. Because of that collective approaches to privacy and security concerns and threats need to be embedded from the beginning into any recommended integrated strategy. Community building and popular education are maybe what differentiate more strongly feminist practices of technologies and highlighting this educational dimension of media and technology literacy is crucial for reframing feminist uses of technology.

Privacy and security that includes a gender perspective should always encourage inclusive dynamics for combining Do It Yourself processes for self-learning and Do-it-With Others processes from peer to peer mentoring to creating safe spaces to crafting trainings or launching campaigns together.