Gender and Feminist Initiatives

Take Back the Tech! is a collaborative campaign to reclaim information and communication technologies (ICT) to end violence against women (VAW). The campaign calls on all information and communications technologies (ICTs) users – especially women and girls – to take control of technology and strategically use any ICT platform at hand (mobile phones, instant messengers, blogs, websites, digital cameras, email, podcasts and more) for activism against gender-based violence. Take Back the Tech! accompanies the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence (November 25 – December 10 each year) with daily actions that explore different aspects of violence against women and ICT tools.

GenderIT.org

GenderIT.org emerged from the Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Rights Programme’s advocacy work in ICT. The need to have examples of national policy, gender-sensitive language, tools for lobbying, and an understanding of the impact of poor or positive policy all within easy access has been expressed by ICT advocates and policy makers alike.

IGNITE

IGNITE: Women Fueling Science and Technology is a global campaign and media project from the Global Fund for Women that explores the roles of science and technology in advancing gender equality.

IGNITE International Girls Hackathon

This initiative is a 24-hour, multi-country coding event in which girl coders around the world collaborate to develop a website or application that addresses a specific challenge facing girls and young women. The Hackathon is part of IGNITE: Women Fueling Science and Technology, a global campaign and media project from Global Fund for Women that explores the roles of science and technology in advancing gender equality and advocates for women and girls’ increased access to and control of technologies.

IAWRT

Intermnational assotiation of women in radio & television (IAWART) is a global organization formed by professional women working in electronic and allied media with a mission to strengthen initiatives towards ensuring women’s views and values are integral part of programming and to advance the impact of women in media.

The Women's Rights Campaigning: Info-Activism

Women's Rights Campaigning: Info-Activism Toolkit is a guide for women's rights activists, advocates, NGOs and community based organisations who want to use technology tools and practices in their campaigning. This Toolkit assembles, strategies, digital tools and case studies from around the world with a critical focus on the intended strategic impact of digital campaigns.

Girls in STEM / Women in Tech

Girls in STEM is an international news section that explores STEM education and careers, the issues facing women in STEM, and what it takes to be a mentor to females in these fields. Women in Tech, is a series from HuffPostTech thatshowcase profiles of innovative female pioneers, from CEOs to scientists, entrepreneurs to engineers, who are changing the way we think about and engage with technology.

Ada camps

The Ada initiative have been organising for the last 7 years AdaCamp, a series of conferences dedicated to increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture: open source software, Wikipedia and other wiki-related projects, open knowledge and education, open government and open data, open hardware and appropriate technology, library technology, creative fan culture, remix culture, translation/localization/internationalization, and more.

Ada Lovelace day

Ada Lovelace Day is an international celebration of women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM).

Ada Lovelace days edit-a-thon actions

Participants are invited to gather and to edit and create Wikipedia entries on women who have made significant contributions to the STEM fields.

Gender Gap in wikipedia

There is a gender gap in Wikipedia and the other projects in the Wikimedia Movement. This page exists to help store information and ideas and to catalog projects that are trying to close that gap.

WikiWomen History Month

WikiWomen's History Month is a wiki-coordinated program of article writing, image/picture creating, international events and edit-a-thons focused on WikiProject Women's History and related projects. It is celebrated each year in March in association with International Women's Day and Women's History Month.

Everyday sexism

The Everyday Sexism Project exists to catalogue instances of sexism experienced by women on a day to day basis. They might be serious or minor, outrageously offensive or so niggling and normalised that you don’t even feel able to protest. Say as much or as little as you like, use your real name or a pseudonym – it’s up to you. By sharing your story you’re showing the world that sexism does exist, it is faced by women everyday and it is a valid problem to discuss.

#YesAllWomen

#YesAllWomen is a Twitter hashtag and social media campaign in which users share examples or stories of misogyny and violence against women. First used in online conversations about misogyny following the 2014 Isla Vista killings, the hashtag was popular in May 2014, and was created partly in response to the Twitter hashtag NotAllMen. YesAllWomen reflected a grassroots campaign in which women shared their personal stories about harassment and discrimination. The campaign attempted to raise awareness of sexism that women experience, often from people they know.

#FeministBatSignal

#FembatSignal Are trolls troubling you? Getting harassed online? Turn on the @FemBatSignal and get help from feminists and allies!

Feminist Hackerspaces

Feminist Hackerspaces is a hackerspace that opposes gender exclusion in traditional hackerspaces. This type of hackerspace fosters creativity and solidarity through the creation of a culture that celebrates the disruption of standards and thus prevents replication of the forms of intersectional oppression. It also aims to create a place for hackers Trusters1 subject to violence, oppression and intimidation

Breaking the circle

Breaking the circle is an international campaign to raise awareness on the fact that gender violence is a problem that concerns both men and women, which focus on the role of men and include them as agents of change. This year's campaign: "BE MAN ENOUGH. BE A LEADER AGAINST GENDER VIOLENCE". They have developed a series of tools and information that will help us spread the message and raise awareness.

Anonymiss

Anonymiss is the yin to the Anonymous yang. We are girls, and we smell better than the boys. Sorry fellas. The Old Spice isn't working for us. This Anonymiss site is committed to the same ideals as some Anonymous: human rights are fundamental and free speech is paramount, excepting for corporations. They have enough hand-puppets in government to speak for them. Anonymiss is always looking for a few good women or (AND) a few ten billion bad girls.

TransHackFeminist Convergence

The TransHackFeminist convergence is a 7 day event that was organised for the first time in Calafou (Catalonia) in August 2014. A second edition will be held from the 25 to the 31 of May in Puebla 2015 (Mexico).

Chayn

CHAYN is an open-source project that leverages technology to empower women against violence and oppression so they can live happier and healthier lives. Running solely on the passion of skilled volunteers, Chayn leverages technology to address the problems women face today. We are also a pro bono service to charities who work with vulnerable women

JASS

JASS Is a global women-led human rights network of activists, popular educators and scholars in 31 countries, that work to ensure women leaders are more confident, better organized, louder and safer as they take on some of the most critical human rights issues of our time.

Africa

Asikana Network (Zambia)

Asikana Network is a group of females aiming to empower women in ICT related fields. We ultimately seek to see a significant increase of girls and women participating at all levels in ICT. It's m ission is to increase interest in and to enhance the active participation of women in the ICT sector by changing mindsets and eliminating negative stereotypes attached to girls and women in ICT.

Feminist Africa

Feminist Africa is a continental gender studies journal produced by the community of feminist scholars. It provides a platform for intellectual and activist research, dialogue and strategy. Feminist Africa attends to the complex and diverse dynamics of creativity and resistance that have emerged in postcolonial Africa, and the manner in which these are shaped by the shifting global geopolitical configurations of power.

FEMNET

The African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) is a pan-African, feminist organization working to advance the rights of women and girls since inception in 1988. FEMNET facilitates the sharing of information, ideas, strategies and experiences amongst its members who are in over 40 countries across Africa and the Diaspora. It has played a critical role in informing and mobilizing African women to participate and influence policies and processes that affect their lives.

SOAWR

The Solidarity for African Women's Rights (SOAWR) is a coalition of 47 civil society organizations working across 24 countries. Established in 2004, SOAWR works to ensure that the rights of girls and women as articulated in the Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women in Africa are prioritized by policy makers on the African continent.

Women, Media and Change (Ghana)

Women, Media and Change (WOMEC) is a national independent Non-Profit and Non-Governmental Organization established in 1994 in response to the need of promoting effective use of the media for the advancement of women.

Akirachix (Kenya)

Akirachix is a Kenya-based, Africa wide network of women in technology to make tech and to inspire and mentor other women to be technologists.

FAO

The project Giving a voice to rural women is designed to support organizations that are already working with rural communities in the documentation of indigenous knowledge. The project it helps them realize and document the value of their knowledge, using media that they can understand and adopt easily. This may involve folk media to promote awareness, for example, or the introduction of new media such as participatory video, which opens new horizons and interests.

Arab Region

Harassmap (Egypt)

Harassmap are working to end the social acceptability of sexual harassment and assault in Egypt. All our activities are geared towards encouraging bystanders – normal people like you and me everywhere around Egypt – to speak up against harassers and have a zero-tolerance attitude towards sexual harassment. Harassmap reportedly now has 25 clones across the world.

Women2Drive (Saudi Arabia)

Saudi Arabia is unique in being the only country in the world where women are forbidden to drive motor vehicles. The women to drive movement is a campaign by Saudi Arabian women, who have more rights denied to them by the regime than men, for the right to drive motor vehicles on public roads.

Kolena Laila (Arab region)

Kolena Laila is a blogging initiative in the Arab region to amplify the voices of Arab women.

Young Arab Feminist Network

Young Arab Feminist Network (YAFN) is a network of young feminists and activists who are encouraging a new discourse of feminism, one that transcends differences between specific viewpoints within the larger spectrum of the ideology.

Qahera: the hijabi superheroine (Egypt)

In Arabic, Qahera means vanquisher, destroyer, omnipotent. And it is also the name this feminist comic-strip icon-in-the-making. Qahera opposes misogyny, fends off street harassers and tackles islamophobia. She boots into “high-gear” in situations where women are mistreated, taking control and trying to change the world in her own way. She also wears a hijab (the head-scarf worn by many muslim women).

Muslim feminists

Muslim feminists is a movement that wished to explore how Muslim feminists understand Islam and negotiate their religious rights and duties on the Internet. They contribute to modern Islamic studies in the era of the World Wide Web and they use cyberspace to meet, discuss and fight for their rights.

Muslmimah Media Watch

Muslimah Media Watch is a forum where Muslim women can critique how their images appear in the media and popular culture. As Muslim feminists they aim to locate and critique misogyny, sexism, patriarchy, Islamophobia, racism, and xenophobia as they affect Muslim women.

ALQAWS (Palestinian)

Alqaws for sexual & gender diversity in Palestinian Society is a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning and queer (LGBTQ) Palestinian activists and allies collaboratively working to transform Palestinian society’s perspectives on gender and sexual diversity and struggling for broader social justice. An open space, alQaws inspires and engages its community to disrupt sexual and gender-based oppression and challenge regulation, whether patriarchal, capitalist or colonial, of our sexualities and bodies.

Asia

Bolo Bhi (Pakistan)

Bolo Bhi is geared towards gender rights, government transparency, internet access, digital security and privacy. We are a team of individuals with diverse backgrounds who are passionate about the same causes and believe it is crucial to bridge the gap between rights advocates, policy makers, media and citizens. It is by bridging this gap that one can move ahead to chart a way forward and resolve issues through consensus.

Hamara Internet (Pakistan)

Hamara Internet is a campaign by Digital Rights Foundation that seeks to raise awareness about violence against women online through various workshops and seminars. It literally means ‘Our Internet’ in English and works to impart digital security tips and training to women and bridge the gender digital divide in Pakistan.

Genderlog (India)

A twitter account called @GenderLogIndia started in early 2013, in the chaotic days and weeks after the Delhi Gang Rape. It is a shared Twitter account that a different person runs each week curating links, resources, campaigns and conversations on different issues around gender: violence, feminism language, mental health, cinema, technology, the law etc etc. 'GenderLog' is a clever handle: read in Hindustani (the common language understood across the Northern part of India and Pakistan) it translate to gender people; read in English it is like a log or record of gender conversations. You can volunteer to do GenderLogIndia for a week and then it goes to someone else. Recently, GenderLog came to some prominence because it started challenging the rather sexist views of one of India's best known, and best, filmmakers; he was not amused, neither was GenderLog.

Apps and Maps to respond to gender violence (India)

After the Delhi Gang Rape there was a lot of interest in how tech could be used to address the issue of sexual violence against women in offline spaces. These are not about online violence but have been spaces where tech meets gender and have inspired some conversations about how tech cannot be used to solve gender problems. Most of these were crowdmaps like Harassmap in Bombay There is also Safecity -Pin the creep and the Safetipin' app that is a crowdsourced safety audit of public space.

The Ladies Finger (India)

The Ladies Finger is an online magazine about pop culture, tech, the arts, books, movies, gender politics and current events with one of the most sharp and critical homegrown feminist and gender lenses on - and they know their arts, movies, books too

Feminist Approach to Technology (FAT) (India)

The mission of FAT is to empower women by enhancing women’s awareness, interest and participation in technology. We work towards this by breaking societal stereotypes and attitudes, encouraging and enabling women to feel capable and comfortable in working with technology, and collaborating with other women’s organizations to mainstream the issue of engendering technology.

Internet Democracy Project (India)

The Internet Democracy Project through research, advocacy and debate, seeks to unearth both the changes wrought by technology to democracy-as-we-know-it and the implications of these changes for our visions of progessive social change if they are to remain relevant in the digital age. They hava a strong feminist perspective.

Gendering surveillance (India)

The Gendering surveillance project aims at showing how the digital age may have further deepened the scrutiny to which women are subjected, women have always been under stringent surveillance - by actors ranging from partners and parents to the state. And this has shaped, and harmed, women’s lives in multiple ways. What can be learned about surveillance from gendering it, then? And what do these insights imply for the fight for stronger human rights protections in the face of surveillance more broadly?

America Latina

Feminist International Radio Endeavour (Latin America)

In 1991, Maria Suarez Toro pioneered FIRE – Feminist International Radio Endeavour across Latin America. Her writings and talks on how the feminist movement relates to new technologies are useful for women across the world. She says, ‘[Technology] has to [be] approached with a high degree of what FIRE calls interactive autonomy. Computers have their own intelligence, but they do not have the self-organised common sense that we need to have a feminist movement: no one will do for us what we do not do for ourselves and each other.’

Dominemos las TIC (Latin America)

Dominemos las TIC is part of the project “Basta de violencia: Derechos de las mujeres y seguridad en línea” of APC that works to improve the skills of using technological tools of women's rights activists in their efforts to end violence against women and respond to the increasing levels of violence against women related to technology.

Pillku (Latin America)

Pillku – Amantes de la Libertad is a digital magazine about free culture and commons. It is published every three months and its purpose, among others, is to assist the development and socialization of communication, culture, cyberfeminism and open and free technologies in Latin America.

Modem Mujer (Latin America)

Modem Mujer is promoting women's participation in ICT's in rural areas. They are appropriating public space offered by the Internet to be at the forefront in the use of new communication technologies to the articulation of international women's movement.

Mujeres Creando (Bolivia)

Mujeres Creando (Eng: Women Creating) is a Bolivian anarcha-feminist collective that participates in a range of anti-poverty work, including propaganda, street theater and direct action. The group was founded by María Galindo, Mónica Mendoza and Julieta Paredes in 1992 and members including two of Bolivia's only openly lesbian activists.

SexualizateTIC 2.0 (Bolivia)

SexualizaTIC 2.0 are a project of Information and Communication Technologies against gender related violence for reproductive and Sexual rights defenders.

EnRedadas (Nicaragua)

EnRedadas promotes online activism and cyberfeminism, and women empowerment trough technology. EnRedadas works with young women discussing the importance of women contribution to science and tech, gender based violence online, privacy for human and women rights defenders and open source software as a political strategy. EnRedadas is a small self-sustained project, based on voluntary work.

Free and Open Source Software Chix (Colombia)

Free and Open Source Software Chix is an international women initiative to promote Open Source Software among women.

Mulheres softwarelivre (Brasil)

Mulheres softwarelivre in Brasil is a project that promotes Open Source and free software among women.

Europe

Women in waves (Netherlands)

Women on Waves was founded 10 years ago with the aim to prevent unsafe abortions and unwanted pregnancies by providing sexual health services including early medical abortions with pills, on board a Dutch ship outside the territorial waters of countries where abortion is illegal. In the last 10 years Women on Waves has created enormous public interest after successful ship campaigns in Ireland (2001), Poland (2003), Portugal (2004) and Spain (2008). The campaign in Portugal catalyzed t

Macholand.fr (France)

Launched past October 2014, Macholand.fr wants to voice actions, embedded in the public, media and political speech, driven by citizens who refuse to see sexism spread massivly without reacting. Macholand.fr is open to all. Each user can participate and propose an action that pin with humor brands, organizations and public figures. It is through a virtual mass action - on facebook, twitter, email and why not through direct legal complaints - the site can act and make our voices heard! (google translate).

Gyn&co (France)

Gyn&co is a web portal that enables access to a list of feminists gynecologists and health professionals.

Feminist server summit (Belgium)

What does it mean to serve and to host? What should server technology of today be about? How to re-appropriate networks for creative experiment? How to invert, detour, parasite and deflate web 3.0 notions of ’service’? The fourteenth edition of is dedicated to a feminist review of mesh- cloud- autonomous- and D.I.Y. servers. Welcome to four intense meeting days mixing lectures, screenings, performances, discussions and workshops.

Speakerinnenn (Germany)

Speakerinnenn aim is to increase the visibility of women in the field of public speaking. With the help of our list it will be easier for organisers to find female experts to speak at their events. We also want to actively invite women* to speak more often and in public about their area of expertise.

Istanbul Feminist Collective (Turkey)

ifk feministler @ifkfeminist had launch a twitter campaign where thousands of Turkish women voice outrage at men who invade their space by spreading their legs while sitting next to them on buses and trains, with the slogan “Stop spreading your legs. Don’t occupy my space,” The campaign reverberated on the social network as women shared their experiences that related to the violation of personal space on public transit.

Pikara Magazine (Spain)

Pikara Magazine is an incisive and well known online feminist magazine in Spanish. They count with hundreds of articles on different topics and receive many visits and comments enabling huge debates to take place. Check out their feminist glossary in language of signs.

Donestech.net (Spain)

Donestech is a cyberfeminist and activist research group founded in 2006. It develops research inasmuch as workshops and audiovisual productions in relation to gender relations to ICT access, uses of and desires.

Pechblenda TransHackFeminist Lab (Spain)

Pechblenda lab was born out of the necessity to generate a space in Calafou (a community in a large former industrial space) for us to flourish, a non-patriarchal TransHackFeminist space where free knowledge springs from raw experimentation (electronic repairs, experiments with turbines, bioelectrochemistry, sound .... ) and self education.

Memes Feministas (Spain)

Memes Feministas is a feminist blog that develops funny feminists memes as a guerrilla communication way of impacting imaginaries and break stereotypes and prejudices.

TransHackFeminist (SP)

TransHackFeminist event, 7 days for all transfeminist collectives, queer, trans, women, hackers, genderhackers and unicorns among others to meet and hack together all technologies, from gender to servers.

LelaCoders (SP)

Lelacoders is a cyberfeminist research project piloted by donestech about the presence of women in the development of computer sciences, free software and hacker cultures.

North America

FemTechNet (Various)

FemTechNet is an activated network of scholars, artists, and students who work on, with, and at the borders of technology, science and feminism in a variety of fields including STS, Media and Visual Studies, Art, Women’s, Queer, and Ethnic Studies. Members in the network collaborate on the design and creation of projects of feminist technological innovation for the purposes of engaging the interests of colleagues and students on advanced topics in feminist science-technology studies. This project seeks to engender a set of digital practices among women and girls, to teach and encourage their participation in writing the technocultural histories of the future by becoming active participants in the creation of global digital archives.

Women, Action and the Media (USA, Canada)

WAM is a people-powered independent nonprofit dedicated to building a robust, effective, inclusive movement for gender justice in media. They are also a strong, growing community of people engaged with media, learning and sharing capacity and skills needed to build a media ecosystem that represents the diversity of our lives and stories.

Fembot (USA)

Fembot community is committed to collaboration, collegiality, helping our members achieve the highest standards of research, and creating content that is as engaging as it is rigorous. Decades of feminist intellectual work have demonstrated the need for continued debate within the field: feminist media research requires sustained and often difficult conversations.

Studio XX (Canada)

Studio XX montreal-based organisation is a bilingual feminist artist-run centre for technological exploration, creation and critique. Studio XX’s mandate focuses on enabling the creative actions and perspectives of women at the forefront of contemporary technological landscapes and the development of a digital democracy that values autonomy and collaboration.

Feminist Frequency (USA)

Feminist Frequency includes the video series Tropes vs. Women, created with Bitch magazine to examine common tropes in depictions of women in film, television and video games, with a particular focus on science fiction. Videos produced in this series include "The Manic Pixie Dream Girl", "Women in Refrigerators" and "The Smurfette Principle". She has also produced a number of other videos analyzing popular culture from a feminist standpoint, such as applying the Bechdel test – whether a film has at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man – to films nominated for an Academy Award

Feminist Hacker Barbie (USA)

Help make Computer Engineer Barbie better! Barbie's new book tells girls they need boys to code for them. Help Barbie be the competent, independent, bad-ass engineer that she wants to be.

Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS)

Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS) strives for a community in which people of all backgrounds, gender expressions or identities, and experiences can feel safe occupying public spaces. In this community, individuals will hold themselves accountable to each other and to the community at-large for preventing public gender-based violence and fostering a safe and harassment-free environment free of the negative influences of power and control. Until we are able to achieve this, CASS wants every community member to feel safe and comfortable addressing public sexual harassment and assault, whether they witness or experience it.

Crash override network (USA)

Crash Override is a support network and assistance group for victims and targets of unique forms of online harassment, composed entirely of experienced survivors. Our network includes experts in information security, white hat hacking, PR, law enforcement, legal, threat monitoring, and counselling. Most, if not all, of our agents are former clients. Prior to formal launch, our trial runs had great success in helping victims lock down their information, prevent SWATing attempts, and feel like they were back in control of their online life.

Ciber Civil Rights Initiative (USA)

CCRI mission is to help victims of online harassment by: providing victims with support and referral services; Raising awareness and educating the public about the nature and prevalence of online abuse; Working with technology industry leaders to encourage the development of design-based solutions to non-consensual pornography and other forms of online abuse; and advocating for state and federal legislation to prevent such abuse, when appropriate.

Online Abuse Prevention Initiative (USA):

OAPI is a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing and mitigating online abuse through: the study and analysis of abuse patterns; the creation of anti-harassment tools and resources; collaboration with key tech companies seeking to better support their communities. Focused on creating changes at an infrastructural level, OAPI seeks to help others understand the patterns and behaviors common in online abuse and what can be done to mitigate it quickly and easily. By working with strategic partners like Crash Override Network, we can quickly identify the critical items that allow sustained online harassment campaigns to go unchecked.