FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED
MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
02 SEPTEMBER 2014
09:00
WS 3
DYNAMIC COALITION ON GENDER AND INTERNET GOVERNANCE MEETING
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The following is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> JAC SM KEE: Hello. Okay. Good morning. I'm guessing people are lost because this is like the most riveting session of the day. Like what else could there be? Thank you for arriving early. I think we will sort of give it another maybe five minutes or so before we start. But maybe I will just introduce the session for today. This is the gender Dynamic Coalition workshop. So really it is not so much a presentation as an interactive strategizing space for all of us of how we can advance gender issues through the IGF as well as outside the IGF. We have a great panel of discussants who will be talking through some of their experiences and sharing some of their thoughts around what are the different dimensions of gender and Internet Governance. We will be talking about accessing issues and content regulation and move on from there. And today we would also like to launch the feminist principles. I can't remember how many participants there were at a full day premeeting and looking at all the principles, how it worked and how it could be potentially useful and hopefully that will give us an hour to think about what we want to take forward together. And we want to share with you some of the findings of the gender report card and working with the Secretariat of IGF since 2012 which is to measure the level of participation as well as how much gender has been taken up as an issue at the IGF.
So and after that we will really just spend some time discussing some steps you would like to take together and how you would like to strategize. Usually the gender happens in the last afternoon of the last day. All we can reflect and evaluate. This is really nice. It is happening on the first session on the first day. So we have an opportunity to say okay, we have some time in the next few days. What can we do together. This is like a good thing. It deserves to be mentioned in the report, transcribe it.
I'm sorry that the room is sort of organised this way as if like, you know, like I am your master. But there's quite a lot of rules around moving things around because it is quite difficult in terms of moving the cables and so on. So we have to do a little bit like, you know, quite silly like this. We are like hello, can you see. So this is kind of unfortunately ‑‑ this is when you know that infrastructure plays a determining role in your behavior and interaction. There is limitations in terms of what you can. We are creative people. So we will try like so.
Your neck is always a little bit like that. But we really want to make this quite informal and really quite casual and please feel free to also like interject if you have questions you want to talk about or if you want to make points of or issues that you really wanted to raise in this session. You are most welcome to do so. It is like our collective space here.
So with that I think that took up my five minutes of wanting to begin this session. So that's good.
Okay. So maybe we can introduce the panel that we have, panel of discussants that we have here this morning. My name is Jac. I am the manager of women's rights programme. We have a global network of organisations that look at access to ICTs for social justice and my programme in particular pays attention to this can enable women's empowerment as well as gender equality, how this can advance the social roles and to my right is Olga Cavalli. Olga is an ICT and Internet specialist with a huge range of experiences and she is also the Minister ‑‑ she is a mother. She plays football on Wednesdays. She is an engineer and a mother and a wife and a Minister. Works in a ministry. Advisor to the Minister. What else? That's it. No special hobbies?
You have to tell a special hobby so you know we feel okay.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Music and what else? Percussion and films.
>> JAC SM KEE: Music and films. That's good. And Kamel is from ‑‑ works for young lesbian women in Indonesia. What's your special hobby? Movies. Making them? Starring in them? Watching them? All of them. All of the above. And then we have Titi Akinsanmi and on Thursdays she ‑‑ yes, on Thursdays only, she is in the gym.
>> TITI AKINSANMI: You wanted an interesting fact I did ‑‑ I (Off microphone). And we felt certainly that we didn't have the (Off microphone).
>> JAC SM KEE: Hmmm.
>> TITI AKINSANMI: (Off microphone). I am a mother and a wife. And in terms of hobbies I actually like to act in movies. And I did one recently but I won't say the name.
(Laughter)
>> JAC SM KEE: And next to her is Bishakha Dhatta. She is with Point of View. She did an amazing presentation at the Discotec in case you missed with very creative users of the Sarmung. Hopefully she will give us a repeat performance at some point. What do you do on Thursdays? Tuesdays. We have got Wednesdays and Thursdays. Now Tuesday.
>> BISHAKHA DHATTA: If you said Wednesday I could say by Wednesday I am sort of in movie watching mode. Yeah. But Monday and Tuesday I feel like it is the start of the week and I need to be a little diligent. So that's when I send e‑mails Monday and Tuesday.
>> JAC SM KEE: We have a very star‑studded panel. We have moviegoers and movie makers and movie starers and for me it is movie enjoyers. We will be having a chat talking about some of the key issues around gender and Internet Governance according to the experiences and really try to like raise some of these things out. I guess to start us off maybe you can tell a little bit about your work and how this gender actually features in your area of work. You can start, Olga.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I want to thank APC for the invitation and especially my friend Daphne, she is sitting there and she is a good friend of mine from Buenos Aires. It is funny because I am not a gender specialist but I got involved in gender issues just by chance and I have been totally captured, part of my time is devoted to this. It was two times in my life that something happened. One was in WSIS when I was the Argentina representative in WSIS and I was called by our Ministry of Education at that time. And he asked me if we could introduce in to the text of the WSIS documents the gender perspective. I had no idea what that was about. I am a specialist in infrastructure. I am an engineer. And he said well, there's a specialist that requested me that this is very important. It was Gloria Vander. She is a very well‑known specialist and she is from Argentina. And we went to the WSIS and we raise our hand and we talk about gender and it was well received by everyone. We were really surprised. And then I happen to chair the ‑‑ in the World Congress of engineering that was held in Buenos Aires in 2010, the National Center of Engineers where I am a member and a member of the board they asked if I could chair the women and engineering track and I said I don't know nothing about this. I don't know about gender. I know about infrastructure. But they said well, you will be good. And since then I have been working on these issues and since that year we have organised a commission that we promote the engineering career among women. We think that the region, Latin America needs more engineers and there is an excellent opportunity for working for women because there is few women and other women we know they do nice careers, international perspective careers, very well paid. We think there is an opportunity there for education and we are totally convinced that really to close the gender gap education is the way to make it. So this is my work related with gender.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you. That's really interesting and I will talk to you later a little bit around like, you know, how to I guess ‑‑ the whole issue around engineering and infrastructure is actually one of the most difficult things to sort of cast a gender perspective in terms of background what are the key governance issues. It will be interesting to pick your brains about it later. Bishakha Dhatta, would you like to share with us a little bit what you do?
>> BISHAKHA DHATTA: I work with a small non‑profit called Point of View. Gender is very much at the heart of the work. We amplify women's voices. In connection with online spaces or the Internet what we are now trying to do is really get gender and sexuality rights activists to start factoring Internet rights in to their work and in to their concepts because I think we are passed that age where the offline and the online are separate worlds. They are completely integrated and most people's lives including women that's one. And secondly we are trying to do the reverse as well. We feel that Internet rights activists also need to put gender and sexuality at the heart of the Internet rights. Not as like an add‑on but really at the center. And then the other way in which I work on gender is I am part of the Wikipedia family, and one of our biggest concerns is that 85% of the people who edit Wikipedia are men and it is a volunteer edited encyclopedia. Anybody can edit. Who edits it sort of decides what the knowledge is on that you find on Wikipedia. We are trying to get more and more women in to Wikipedia. But it is a big, big challenge.
>> JAC SM KEE: Titi?
>> TITI AKINSANMI: Can you hear me? Yes, you can. I think for me my work has been very deliberate around engaging with gender issues. I specifically said gender because it depends on the particular context that you are in. For me even particularly ensuring is that whatever work that's being done is intricately linked with addressing the challenges that women and young girls face.
Organisation internally we just ‑‑ I'm not sure how many people are aware. We recently made public a diversity report card just trying to look at how we are doing in terms of the numbers, the number of women in the organisation. And we recognize that a lot more work needs to be done. I think we are sitting at about 30%. Some would say that's not bad but we know we could do better. It should be an equal world and not leaning in one particular direction. On joining Google, one of the things that I appreciated is something called WAG, Women at Google. Helping each other grow within their career parts. I am a policy and Government relations lead but I certainly am not an engineer. But I understand technology enough to be able to interpret it between the engineers and the people who need to do the work on the ground. And one of the things that I find interesting is within WAG you have the engineers and policy leads and business and sales folks. And the key is to ensure that whatever work you are doing that you are pulling on the strength of the women around you. I think that's also critical to being able to make an impact externally.
We do a lot of work around bringing girls in to computer science, math. I have made it a personal mission to get more girls in to policy, because sometimes when you get them in to the engineering side of it and comes to making the law and regulation there is a huge gap and not able to meet the specific needs. Within my work at Google looking at the impact of technology on the girls education. I come from the African continent. Young girls in general are the last to be considered to be in school. So how best can we make use of technology? And by technology I am talking about mobile and talking about the Internet to ensure that young girls who cannot go to the transitional forms of school can still be educated. And the last thing I want to say is that I find interesting and I am beginning to pursue at the work at Google is looking at the intersection and Internet rights. I recall I was at a session in Africa and one of the questions was sometimes it is so hard to be able to interpret or translate the abuse that's happening online in to the physical world in terms of being able to follow up on it. There is increasing interest to look in to and the role that technology could play, the role that technology plays on those abuses and even more specifically how can technology be used to mitigate, to address and to find how would I put it, to find the right solutions for those that haven't abused. Thank you.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you. That sounds really interesting. I am particularly interested to hear about WAG more. That sounds really cool. Kamel?
>> KAMEL MANAF: I am Kamel from Indonesia. What I want to say is about our experience as young lesbian and bisexual and transgender and we see that Internet has an important role, for example, how Internet is being used to mobilize and organise the community and also to disseminate education of Human Rights of LGBT. But since 2011 we found out that LGBT sites are being blocked in Indonesia. We are trying to work with different organisations, different multi‑stakeholders like Civil Society who work on ICT rights and Internet rights and also with the Association of Asia and also how we try to communicate with the Ministry of Communication and information about the blockage. So we had several meetings and dialogue with them on how to discuss and negotiate why they block our websites and how the regulation and how to make the decision. It is really challenging because when we met them they have different perspectives. Like, for example, when we met the ISP they said that ‑‑ the Ministry of Communication and Information asked us to block the LGBT sites because it is considered as pornography. Any kind of content related to LGBT it is considered as pornography or sexually defined. The Ministry say we never say something to ISP. We never say they have to block your sites.
So they are like throwing balls to each other and then it was a good meeting, for example, when we met the Association of ISP in Indonesia. So we tried to talk to them, that maybe because they are the umbrella or the Association for the ISPs. So they said that okay, we can talk to the ISPs who block your sites. But then there was no clear understanding or explanation that how is the process of the blockages, the accountability and the transparency of the blockages. So if we are talking about access, actually besides the infrastructure we are also talking about the access to the minority groups in Indonesia, how they marginalize us already in offspace for discrimination and violence. And then it continues on Internet, for example, the biggest online Indonesia, the biggest online Indonesian community. The LGBT who becomes members, naming, give Avatar to explain to people that homosexual persons, trans people are not friendly to them and they discriminate if you become their members. In this part I would like to say that when we are talking about gender and Internet Governance it is not only affecting women but also men who are nonheterosexual and especially women with different sexual orientation and different gender identities. Thank you.
>> JAC SM KEE: Hello. Thanks Kamel. And that's like really interesting and bring us right in to the heart of the issue, actually what is the value of the access to the Internet and what are the different challenges we are facing. One is around issues to access and what is the different roles that different ‑‑ I guess different stakeholders can play in trying to bring access and to bridge the digital divide. I think I read recently on the Broadband Commission report there what's the number now? It was something like 200 million more men who have access to the Internet than women. Yeah, which is ‑‑ it is a huge gap actually. And there has been ‑‑ I guess if the Internet becomes such a critical interface to all aspects of our lives where we have to do almost everything ‑‑ all the different kinds of engagement and participation that we do in societies somehow is linked to being connected to the Internet to some extent. And in many places of the world there is still lots of people who are not connected and even in places where you imagine that there is a lot of connectivity there are still people who are not connected to get this kind of information that they would like to get connected. But apart from the content, one of the biggest ‑‑ one big push has been around mobiles for access. And mobiles for access for women and girls especially and there is a lot of public/private partnership collaboration also happening around this and private sector companies saying we want to invest in providing access. And the best way we think is through mobile phones. And I wonder if there is something like maybe you can comment around the role of the state or the role of the Government in providing access, is access to the Internet a public resource. How can we deal with this?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I planned a very short presentation and I was addressing exactly those figures you mention, if I go through it. I never know how this works. Whichever meeting I go I don't know how this works. So this will be another time of my ‑‑ oh. Okay. Of course, my perspective will be to the Latin American region where I am from. I am from Argentina. And this is ‑‑ this is a picture of the access in the region. As you can see the largest country with more access ‑‑ with more people accessing is Brazil but it is not the country with the higher percentage which is Argentina and Chile and this is general numbers. Not divided in between men and women. And we expect to have an average Internet access for the region of more than 50% by 2016 growing from a 38% in 2011. So that is growing. But the real question about access is how much you pay for access. It is very variable depending on the country.
This is a very interesting graphic that I took the numbers from a study made by the Region Commission for Economics for United States (speaking in non‑English language) Economic Commission for affairs of Latin America. If you can see how much people pay for Internet access in different countries really related with the income per person, GDF per capita really it is very different. For example, in Bolivia, which is a country not so well connected to the submarine cables of fiber optic, you pay almost 30% per capita to access the Internet. And then you have Argentina with a lower price of 1% and then you have like, for example, countries in as a comparison countries from Europe, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France with really very, very low prices compared with what some countries in Latin America pay or the whole region pay. Worst is when you consider the mobile Internet access prices. So you have even more disadvantages for some countries. Also Argentina pays for more the fixed connectivity and, of course, those countries inlands like Paraguay or Bolivia, prices are higher because they have less access. This is a very impressive chart that shows at the ‑‑ at your left it is a speed and to the right is the monthly price. If the red line is the OCD countries, you know, Europe, United States and some of the countries there are two countries from Latin America in OCD which is Mexico and Chile. So the speed they have very high. Don't think about the megabits or that. Just look at the size of the line and look at the speed of other countries. So below you have Sudan, Nicaragua and Bolivia and Honduras. So this is a very big gap. Then this is for everyone, women and men.
And then this is exactly what Jac was saying about the gender gap online. I took this information from a very interesting study made by ITU about gender and ICTs. So you see the light blue are women and the dark blue is men. And then you have the figures divided in to Developed and Developing Countries and then the whole world as an average. As you can see in the developing world the gap is higher in between men and women. And then the whole world, of course, this gap of Developing Countries is reflected.
But what does this mean? This means that there is almost 200 million women ‑‑ men than women accessing the Internet. There are like 200 million women not accessing the Internet. So if you look at the figures all over the world, you would say Olga, this is not that much. We are like two thirds of the world are accessing the Internet now. That means 2000 million people. It is like 10% of women not accessing the Internet less than men. But this means that this 10% of women accessing less they don't have access to higher education possibilities. They don't have access to tools that can make them be interpreters and have more economic freedom. And they ‑‑ some of them will never have access to the Internet and some will do that later. And as we know and we are totally convinced that the gender gap can only be really overcome with education and with access. So also there is a tendency all over the world of less people starting ICTs career and the careers related with technology and this is higher in women.
So what can the Governments do? Many Governments in Latin America are doing several things. In Argentina there is a big project installing fiber optics all around the country. There you have the map of my country on the left and then you have a very interesting programme, I have seen the Ministry of ICTs of Colombia here in the meeting. I saw him this morning and yesterday I commend them for their very good plan which is called Viva Hital. It is a large national project of ICTs that includes enhancing the connectivity and the access to everyone. Then you have these programmes related with giving computers to students in Argentina. We have the largest in the world which is called Connect Diwad. They have given to the students more than 3 million and a half computers. It is the largest in numbers. And then you have plan Saval from Uruguay but it is very good especially for rural areas and Viva Hital in Colombia has programmes for students.
One thing we do in Latin America is the School of Internet Governance, we have two things related with gender. We review the gender issues and we have a strict rule of having half and half women and men as students. We never allow another percentage. Always half and half women and men and we have been growing from a very small one. We have organised eight since 2009 and now we have trained more than ‑‑ the last one was in the Caribbean. Very lingual. We have trained like 600 people all with fellowships from all these countries. I won't name them because it is a long list. And also as I told you in the national centers of engineers in Argentina I am organizing since 2010 a commission. We tried to promote the career in between young girls in Argentina and in the region we are working with UNESCO preparing materials for high school. And we will have a Congress in as part of the regional engineering Congress of Latin America on the 3rd of November. You are kindly invited. I am not sure if we have remote participation. And that's it. Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you, Olga. And I know that you worked on this quite quickly yesterday because I sorted through some of the questions. It is really very much appreciated. So Titi, I mean is Google doing anything to try and improve access? I mean the private sector is interested in investing in access for women and girls. And I wonder if there is any initiative that is being done at all. I guess one of the questions that we also have, in terms of like working on issues around access for women and girls is questioning this sort of like public/private partnership and where is the role of Civil Society also in inputting to this and able to respond to the realities of women and girls beyond just kind of economic empowerment sort of trajectories.
>> TITI AKINSANMI: I will try and respond from a general access strategy and then talk to the specific. I have a couple of questions that I think we need to be able to rethink the way we approach question or the issues around access to the Internet and women issues in general.
First off we as Google we tend to go where others fair to tread in general. So when it comes to access we think outside the box. So on access being able to approach it from the angle of shared infrastructure. How we use existing resources to be able to meet the needs that are facing us. I am not sure how many people are aware of Project Link. Project Link is a fiber that we have done in Uganda. We should be able to roll out in more cities. It is completely turning on its head the models around pricing. We are not bringing Internet access directly to the end user but we are providing it to the intermediaries who can then because we are providing it at a really good rate, at a ridiculous rate are able to project it at the end. That's Metro fiber. We also have a lot of conversations around TV wide spaces. TV wide spaces I think this will resonate with a lot of people except for the folks in the U.S. When you switch on your TV and you go to some channels and you get the black and white, that's spectrum that's currently not being used. We have been able to add other fiber. Can actually use that spectrum to bring Internet access to people's houses. Think of the most remote village. I come from a village in Nigeria where we only got electricity poles in 2002 but there is television with lovely antennas. And it does get those blank spaces. So being able to provide a technology the rights of that spectrum we can bring access to the most rural of spaces.
So that's two. I'm also probably ‑‑ people have heard of Project Balloon and using that to bring Internet access to the most remote spaces in New Zealand. That's something we have been able to put out and trial in specific places and we are hoping to build on. That's three specific access projects that builds on existing infrastructure and technology that will not cost a developing nation or a least developed nation an arm and a leg to put a new infrastructure to be able to make Internet access which should be a right in place. Now the questions that I have though is inasmuch as you provide Internet access and I am speaking from a Developing Country perspective now is it is even more critical the kind of content that you have online. So my question when I see some of the numbers is why is there such low uptake even where there is Internet access provided. Is it that the content that young girls and women in general are looking for is not out there? Is it that they don't have the requisite skills to be able to access that consent or is it not relevant to the need that they currently have.
My sister‑in‑law lives in the UK and one day she posts a message on the social network please somebody send me the recipe in my local language for Okra. And I told her oh, just go to Youtube and you will find a lot of videos and instantly she found a plethora of videos showing how to make Nigerian soup. That's relevant content. She wouldn't go online for any reason but she wanted to make a particular soup. Some would say that's very traditional she wants to make soup. The same way my mother who retired at 65, because it helps to translate to what we need to do. She retired and she ‑‑ she was an English teacher or she is an English teacher. She wanted to be able to do more and I said look, you have really good skills. Why don't you sit down and record yourself and share the knowledge. She wanted to continue teaching and not be paid. And she thought that's uncomfortable for me. These are questions we are not necessarily asking. Are women in the space where they feel comfortable they have access to the technology, are they willing to take up that role. Those are questions that we need to address more.
And then the last part I wanted to speak is looking at the economic impact of the Internet in the lives of women. So there has been a lot of rhetoric around the economic impact around the Internet. How does it make an economic difference in a woman? What makes it different when you have access, unrestricted access? Is it on your mobile device? Is it at home? Is it in a shared resource space? What's the actual economic impact? If we are able to demonstrate that we are able to make a bigger space to have access that's specifically directed at women. Thank you.
>> JAC SM KEE: And I think maybe beyond economic impact as well it would be good to measure and articulate what is the impact to the advancement of women's status in society as a whole. So even in terms of like her capacity to be able to participate in the production of culture and engage in all these different aspects as well which we really don't think about so much when we are trying to measure impact in terms of access. And I am glad that you raised issues not about access to infrastructure but about access to content, and what kinds of content and different types of barriers that you might face which I think Bishakha, it would be great to get your thoughts around this.
>> BISHAKHA DHATTA: One of the issues ‑‑ sorry, is this not on? Yes. Now it is on. Right? I can hear myself. Okay. So I think if we look at access from the point of view of the end user, its first infrastructure and I think there is a question, for instance, in India we now have about 200 million broadband connections, but I think we have 950 million SIM cards being used. So I think the bigger question around technology is what direction do we really go in. Do we want to continue emphasizing broadband and do we want to look at mobile technologies. We also have Mozilla more recently introduced last week the cheapest Smartphone in the market in India that's 33 dollars because India is also one of those countries even though we have 950 million SIM cards in use most of them are for feature phones. And we are one of the countries where even people who have Smartphones don't have data plans. It is very expensive.
So people use free WiFi wherever they can. So that's sort of a bigger technological question I would be interested in hearing your thoughts. The other thing is I think even once you do have the technology or the infrastructure in place, one of the biggest barriers of like actual access, right, is language. So we recently did an experiment where we taught a group of rural women journalists with not very high levels of education to use the Internet. And the biggest barrier that we found is so, for instance, we taught them to do a Google search because that's a very basic function. Is that if you search for information in English, the amount of information that you find is like a thousand times more than if you were to look in some sort of local language. So I think realistically speaking if you come from a country where you speak your first language is not English, one is infrastructure. Two is gender. We found in the past also that you can bring a technology say to a village, like a road but who gets to use that road? Is it men? Is it women? Is it trans people? All that depends on social factors and the same holds true with Internet technologies. Because we have a lot of shared computers particularly in poorer households where preference is given to the boy or man in the household and then the really big question is actually language. That seriously restricts access for millions and millions of people across countries.
>> JAC SM KEE: That's a really good point. And we have been doing some ‑‑ we have this gender evaluation methodology tool that we use to try and evaluate particular kinds of ICT for development projects and a lot of it is around access models as well. So it is really interesting to see how all of these different factors play out in terms of like social/cultural norms that act as real barriers to access. They really like a lot of attention being paid to cost issues but I am also really happy to hear diversity of technology, solutions that's being proposed. So TV wide space and fiber optics and hot air balloons, creative thinking. Yes, it is only Smartphones and Smartphones is the way and you go nuts and you go okay, it is not the only way. Let's think of something else. So let's talk a little bit maybe ‑‑ so once you have access let's talk about content and what happens to the content and the kind of practices that happens online as well that can also restrict what you can or cannot do and what can we do as an Internet community around it. One of the research that we have done is looking at I guess accountability of social media companies in the experiences of violence against women that uses Facebook online. So we did a research on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube as three big major platforms and we looked at how different kinds of abusers are being faced in those spaces to harassment, to stalking, to taking of private information and using it as a form of threat and abuse, and what are the responses available in order to access some kind of redress, whether you are able to let this situation stop or whether you are able to just take some kind of action around this because we know from previous research by different organisations and groups as well that these kinds of acts of targeted violence towards women and girls online also narrows their capacity to be able to participate on the Internet as an emerging public space. So whose responsibility is it to deal with? Is it a joint responsibility? Is it the role of the Government? Is it the role of the people who are providing those platforms, social media companies? What can we do around this? So maybe I will get ‑‑ who would like to take a stab? Olga. Okay.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I think it is very important and the point that you made about language, I was right in language because you ‑‑ just in the moment before you said it because it is a big issue and not only for those languages that are spoken by very few people. It happens with Spanish, that it is spoken by millions of people. If you go to Wikipedia and check how many arms are written in Spanish and compare with Polish or German, we are really behind and I started to think about what to do towards that. The problem that I find is the content is not relevant. When you want to find things that are useful when you study and when you want to do an investigation, when you want to understand something, you really find meaningful things in English. And then if you are able to read and write in English, then you access that content. And if you don't then you miss that. So one experiment that I did with my students I used to be a teacher at the diplomacy career and we had a lecture about technology. So the obligation they had to do was to write an Article in Wikipedia but it had to be relevant content, academic content. The teachers reviewed the content and the obligation should be related with technology in Argentina or with technology in Latin America in Spanish. That was the idea and we did very well. They produced fantastic content. They were happy that their contents were in Wikipedia and they thought it was very important because it enhanced the content.
You couldn't ‑‑ you couldn't imagine that it is so difficult in Universities to promote this. I could only do once. In other Universities that I work I could never convince other colleagues to do that because they don't think that Wikipedia is a valuable space for academic content, which I think it is huge mistake. So we have to start from our environment, maybe to do some changes. Just wanted to share this experience with you. Thank you.
>> JAC SM KEE: So moving back to language access and content and relevant information, beyond looking at the kinds of like threats that actually also act as a barrier, we can go back to that. Maybe we can also talk about the 15% of content on Wikipedia and women and actually what are some of the challenges and barriers to that. And maybe also the culture of content communication online and how that influences this.
>> BISHAKHA DHATTA: Since it has come up a few times maybe it would be interesting for the audience. So I think one of the things that we found is that there are three kinds of barriers related to people contributing to Wikipedia. Some specifically related to gender. Some are broader. So one of them is we have technological barriers. You know, most of us are now used to going to social media sites, et cetera, where the user interface is far more contemporary. Whereas the Wikipedia interface is actually something that is almost a generation behind and the back end is very sort of clunky to use. So a technological barrier that exists for both men and women for everyone is the user interface. But I think the two barriers that really relate to gender is one is the culture of Wikipedia. Right? And the culture is not that dissimilar from our online communities which are male dominated and I am thinking maybe more extreme communities like read it, et cetera. But on Wikipedia also we have culture which is very, very ‑‑ which is not conflict of us at all. Right? And we know from lots of social studies, et cetera, that women do not like to sort of knowingly put themselves in situations of ongoing conflict. Whereas it is very funny because I consider myself part of the women's movement and the open knowledge movement and I see most faces. Often when I am in women's rights movement meetings we don't agree with each other stuff because we want to be sisterhood is powerful type of stuff.
And then I go to some Wikipedia stuff and I go oh, my God, there is too much disagreement and that's part of the gender problem. And I think the third thing is a social issue, which is socialization issue is that from, you know, we as women have been brought up not to think of sort of ourselves as knowledge creators in a sense. Right? Because the way sort of authority has come down vis‑a‑vi knowledge is male generated. We have a difficulty saying oh, my God, we have something to say that should be taken seriously by this world. And to go back to the experiment that I was telling all about teaching rural women journalists to use the Internet. One of the most interesting things is when these women who were not previously literate became journalists, the hardest time they had was writing editorials in their newspaper. Again to write an editorial is like writing a Wikipedia Article. You have to believe that what you have to say actually matters, right? It actually counts and that's something that women have traditionally been told that you don't count ‑‑ your voice doesn't count, what you think doesn't count. So it is sort of this deep socialization thing. So that's just the Wiki part of it. Yeah.
>> JAC SM KEE: Yesterday at the Discotec there was a very interesting concept that I also heard which is around how to circumvent self‑censorship. A lot of the conversations around censorship is very much on state censorship versus the individual and then later you think about actually what is this impact. And then you think about self‑censorship and how to deal with this and not dealing with the socialization aspect. Sometimes it is really about dealing with the emotional barriers as well which is so not seen as important. It is just completely depoliticalized. It is a huge chunk that we need to overcome, especially for women and girls. But Kamel was also raising issues around once you have the content out there, once you overcome this and think you have something valuable to say and then you share your experiences and these are kind of non‑normative experiences that is not straight, that is not of a particular dominate group of people, then that can also get censored in various ways from morality issues to looking at deviate sexuality. Looking at minority sexuality as deviate or problematic and I think many different people play different roles in making this happen. So from the state to also like you note to providers of platforms and User‑Generated Content, to the users themselves, so what is ‑‑ again I really want to get back to this question of what are our different roles in addressing this. How do we be accountable to ensuring that there is a diversity of unheard stories and experiences online because that is the promise of the Internet I suppose. So I'm not sure who might want to take this on. Maybe Titi, you would like to take it on and then maybe Kamel.
>> TITI AKINSANMI: I will take it on and then promptly drop the Google hat. This is a discussion irrespective of the room we have. I want to track back to what you said. I wrote it down here. It is one thing to be given a platform. It is another thing for you to be able to own it, recognize and see the value in what you bring. So a bit of a flipside to self‑censorship and this is something that happens a lot to everyone who gets online. Women are unable to take that ownership and recognize that there is value to what they bring to the table. I think that's critical. In terms of content, I think it is a shared responsibility, wearing a Google hat and not wearing a Google hat. The freedom that you have been given becomes a huge portion of taking some ownership and recognizing that if you don't, quote/unquote, "manage what you share, what you develop, what you" ‑‑ I'm looking for all the right words. What you put out there. The owner does not necessarily rely on somebody else to do that for you because when somebody else begins to do that for you it becomes an issue of policing and control. It has been an interesting two years. And now I am speaking with the Google hat on. It has been an interesting two years in that it has emerged that not only has a lot of rhetoric around being able to manage content, been circumvented in some ways but that particularly technology companies need to do a lot more in ensuring that when data has been shared that it is safely guarded. So it means that we need to continue to be innovative. Beyond encryption ensures there is a lot of innovation that around we manage data. So a lot of the work we have done in the last two years is increasing encryption. Previously encryption between e‑mails was an option. Now it is not an option. But I think you can still choose to unencrypt but how many people get to that point. Part of taking responsibility is recognizing the issues. But owners then lies on the provider of the service to ensure those terms and conditions are not onerous. In terms of the role of the different players, the Government has a critical role to play but that role does not translate to a trackel of innovation.
>> Sorry?
>> TITI AKINSANMI: Trackel in terms of completely making it unaccessible. When you trackel something there is no free flow. Regulation walks a thin line between content management or content trackel and I think that's a role that Government needs to find a better understanding of how they play. I think that Civil Society plays a critical role and also having a better understanding of the space we are in. I have found that I transition from private sector to Civil Society to academia and now I am back in private sector. So far I haven't made it in to Government. We need to better understand the issues that technology and the positions that we take and make a clear case for the positions for those positions. Otherwise we just sometimes ‑‑ we are quite ‑‑ I keep saying we. Civil Society can be quite reactive in our approach to issues. So I think those are the key things that I really want to mention really quickly and then we can track back to me again.
>> JAC SM KEE: Okay. I will ask Kamel a question, and then after that I will ask the final question and then we will close speakers. And I think we are running out of time a little bit. Titi mentioned around issues of encryption and trying to protect data and to develop different technologies to do this. Is there gender and sexuality protection in terms of the work that you do and what could this be?
>> KAMEL MANAF: Yeah. I would like to continue what Bishakha told us before about the language because actually yeah, for me as a person and also as a community sometimes most of the information and education about LGBT rights are in English, right? So that's actually what one of our organisations from Indonesia, the LGBT organisation, one of the representatives here what they do is actually they are trying to translate all of these materials from English or French in to Indonesian so they can get access to that information. So from that information actually they can widen the network from as an LGBT organisation but they can also collaborate working together with other Human Rights group. This is how their website is a very powerful space for them to organise as an LGBT community but also trying to engage with other Human Rights activism in Indonesia. And then when it happens that in 2011 they found out that their website was blocked, in that time maybe Internet Governance is not really a friendly language for people especially LGBT. And also I think in wider Human Rights activism also Internet Governance is not really clear or known as part of Human Rights actually.
So what was the suggestion? Because they want to continue their activism and they said we just decide to move our dominate hosting with other name and now their website is changed in to Suwaki. So that they continue their activism and they continue to mobilize the community. In the other side, the other human LGBT activists said just change this provider. Because the other provider does not block us, which I think it can be ‑‑ or you can use Torph, for example. Yeah. The circumvent tool. So you can move the IP address and you can access the LGBT sites that was blocked, but for me I think and based on recess, I did that with two of my colleagues who are also here. We see that this issue, the blocking of LGBT sites is not only a technical problem that you can solve but this is part of the Human Rights that your rights to access information and your rights to have online organisation it is actually part of the Human Rights because it is also based on the last Human Rights concept Resolution on 2012. They just released their Resolution on protection enjoyment and ‑‑ enjoyment protection and ‑‑ enjoyment and protection on Internet. So what happened in offline should be treated same in online. So this discrimination and violence towards LGBT offline now continuing in online space. So that we also want to say that this is also part of LGBT rights, as part of Human Rights and also based on the UN Human Rights Resolution on LGBT rights as part of Human Rights. So we see that it is not only technical problem but we have to say that this is a Human Rights issue.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you. That's very useful. And Bishakha, you wanted to add as well?
>> BISHAKHA DHATTA: The management thing is a very complicated issue. Two or three examples to demonstrate why it is complicated. One is, for instance, we are told, for instance, on social media networks that if we violate the terms and continues like the use ‑‑ what's it called now? I am losing my language. The terms of service, yes. But, you know, our content can be taken down, but there has been a couple of cases in July and August this year on social media networks where even though people have voluntarily and consentingly put up images, somebody put up an image of herself doing an ice buckle challenge in a bikini. It would not be considered nudity. You cannot go on a nude beach wearing a bikini. It is not nude. But here is the thing. So you are not actually violating the terms of service but that kind of content is being taken down and I am just giving you one example. So I think there's a certain arbitrariness with which, one, it is impossible to actually go through the terms of service as they are currently written. Because quite honestly from a user's perspective the terms of service are written to ensure sort of limited legal liability, right? And to ensure legal protection to the platforms of a company. I think to expect any user to go through that is insanity. So one is I think we need terms and conditions which users can actually read and understand, right? Some sort of version of the legal mumbo jumbo.
The second thing is we need content management systems which actually comply with the terms of service, not violate them or do not arbitrarily interpret them and there are a number of cases in the United States recently again related to social media networks where there is very, very interesting question of governance which has come up, which is if these sort of instances of content had gone to the courts, chances are that in the U.S. this would have all been protected and would not have been taken down. But at the same time we have intermediaries which are located now in this country which are sort of overriding that jurisdiction, right? A sense by taking down the content. I don't know what the answer is quite honestly but it is a very complicated question. So just wanted to flag it. And so to say something we need to watch out for is that I think a lot of the platforms are becoming as big as countries and sort of assuming governance. And so we really need to think a little bit about private censorship, things like this and how it affects us. Yeah.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. It is a very complicated issue in terms ‑‑ it is really a complicated issue in terms of what are the key issues and what are the gender dimensions and things to be considered and all the different elements around what even makes up like governance of this Internet that we are thinking about and the different components of it. For example, infrastructure and the different levels around it. I know that Olga is very active in ICANN and how to bring gender dimension in to the issue of operations of Internet and content to companies are as big as countries and what jurisdiction do you run and how do you think about issues about this. Who is making decisions. Is it the engineers within the company or the policy or the team of people that's being hired out and where do Civil Society feature in all of these different positions. To behaviors and interactions where it is about laws and it is about policies and how do we regulate when certain kinds of I guess violations of rights happen. And I think one of the values of the IGF is precisely the fact that we can sit here and have spent two hours having quite ‑‑ really quite good conversations around this and beyond and really try and, you know, meet up with different people who play different roles to have an insight because often we are stuck in our own stakeholder perspective. We don't have an insight in to how things are working on other section and this is one of the values in which IGF brings to this kind of conversation. And there's been an interest to make IGF a permanent Forum rather than a five‑year mandate. Maybe even for Olga and Titi, I know you invest in Internet Governance schools in Latin America and in Africa. Maybe it is time for an Internet Governance school for women. And maybe this is something that we can think about working together and build capacity to get more women and girls to participate in the process. Last insight and thought.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much. You really make a very good point. I didn't think about it but I start to think about that now. What I would like to say is something that we as Argentina said in NETmundial in our document and in microphone, finally didn't go in to the final document but it doesn't matter. We still support that. Is that there is a huge lack of women participation in leadership positions in the ISTAR organisations, IGF, ICANN, ISOC. I am glad to know that there are companies like Google and other big companies that take care of that balance and I know you are working towards that. Some of us we do something, we have a sense of having balance between men and women. But other organisations for the moment this is not happening. But what we believe is that there are enough well prepared women to take these positions. So it could be a time that there were no women, but now we have a lot of women that are well prepared and well trained to be part of those leadership roles in those organisations. So we have to work on the women school for sure. Thank you for that idea.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you. Titi.
>> TITI AKINSANMI: I had the opportunity to take part in a capacity building session. Think about it for a moment. For those who are gentlemen in the room think about the women in your life who would put themselves forward in an opportunity to take leadership. It is few and far between. Like you said Olga, the women who are capable of taking these roles but are they not putting themselves forward. Are we enabling each other as much as we continue to agree all the time but we also disagree sometimes, are we willing to support each other. The school of Internet Governance this has been a pet peeve of mine, go through all the available schools on Internet Governance and I mean all the schools. And I came to one conclusion, there is nothing that beats contextualization. Contextualization meaning understand the participants that you want to reach and to meet their needs. There is three classes going on specific to Africa, two in English and one in French and as much as we open up the application to a plethora of people the majority turned out to be coming from men. But we have a significant number. We had I think a total of 600 applications for 35 spaces which is not bad. That's why we end up with 90 spaces in general. In terms of being able to do something on the school of Internet Governance is something we put on the table but above all there is more to be done.
>> JAC SM KEE: Participate maybe in IGF. Nothing like throwing people in to the deep end to really get in to things. Kamel and then Bishakha. I have to ask you to be a little bit briefer because we are running out of time.
>> KAMEL MANAF: I think from our experience and also from our research we want to say talking about Internet Governance, we feel and we understand how it is important the Internet as a public and political spare. So that from all the discrimination and violence and how Internet has an important role for advancing LGBT rights in Indonesia we feel that Internet Governance consists of multi‑stakeholders. It relates to how multi‑stakeholders relates to diversity. So we feel that LGBT should actively participate in decision making and policy making related to Internet Governance. And I feel so excited about the school for Internet Governance. Maybe not only women but also for LGBT. Thank you.
>> BISHAKHA DHATTA: Feminists principles of an Internet which PC has just brought out it is a wonderful opportunity for us to really bring gender and Internet Governance together. We all have that sheet that's with us. I want to urge everyone in this room to take that sheet with us to sessions, to really look at this, to ‑‑ when we go to network ‑‑ Net Neutrality or whatever to try and think of an agenda and what's being missed out here. Is that a question we can ask? And then I think we take gender and Internet Governance forward.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you very much and yes, if you have ‑‑ you should actually have a copy of the feminist Internet principles with you. It has been distributed I believe. And we are really appreciating feedback as well in terms of how you think this might be useful or not or if there are any gaps or how this might be flushed out. So first this session hasn't ended. Just the presentations. Don't leave the room yet. I wanted to say thank you very much to the panelists for really brilliant thoughts. Thank you.
(Applause.)
>> JAC SM KEE: Clap for each other. Round of applause. And then we are going to leave this very ‑‑ this stage and hopefully have some roving mics. Do we have mics? Microphones? Yeah. We have microphones. Good. So now is the time if any thoughts that emerged in the discussion, if there is anything you would like to say, we will spend 15 minutes just having a conversation and then we will present to you some other findings from the general report card. Thank you. And I will come on ‑‑ thank you very much.
>> Should I? Thank you very much for a lot of insights and projects that you shared. I am from the International Telecommunication Union and I think a lot of work that has been showcased here shows also how we still bridge the gender divide but not only in terms of using and online we have done studies that show still to kind of more ‑‑ less women online than men. I would like to offer another opportunity to showcase. ITU together with women launched the gender equality award. Nominations for that award are open. It is open until this Friday. So we might extend that for one more week. But we also already have around 80 nominations from around 40 countries. Through ICTs, to economic empowerment, to bridging the digital divide in terms of access. Civil Society is both welcome to nominate and be nominated. So we welcome those nominations and look forward to that. And then the first of our list ‑‑ this is the first year that we are doing that. So I think it is again a good opportunity to showcase that great work that you are all doing. Thanks very much.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you. The ITU awards, please nominate your awesome projects.
>> Yes, very interesting with this section, when we talk about for Internet Governance, how gender mainstreaming in to the Internet Governance. We talk about the content. We talk about the opportunity of women of access to Internet. We need to have a very strong Civil Society. But it is not enough. Because we have seen already at the UN level they have also SIDR Convention in which there are signature countries, some complying with all these international Conventions but some are not. So I think it is very important if Civil Society in each country to lobby the Government, to integrate gender mainstreaming or integrate gender in ICT Internet Governance with gender sensitive in to their policy and also in to their revelation that is supportive for women. In terms of content also we talk about the content at the different ‑‑ the different languages. Also something that we need to do. In Cambodia we have the template for Cambodian language. In terms of the content related to Beijing, Beijing platform for action that promote that ‑‑ that urge the party to promote the participation of women in media. So as much as we have women in media, then we can have more content about for gender sensitive. Thank you very much.
>> JAC SM KEE: So engaging with existing kind of like state mechanisms to also sort of more ‑‑ yeah. I need another mic. Is there another mic so that we can have one roving mic and I can hang on to one mic? So I may have to cut you short if I have to. It is a power thing. I'm sorry.
Thank you. Okay. So quick comments, what you think are key issues. Quick responses? Things you might want to share?
>> Quick comment. I want to learn about the Internet rights with the economic right, especially for TP and any people here who have the capacity to support the poor women. Most of the poor women they are struggling. And I wonder if the people who has power or has capacity to support them, to bring the IT to the women, small entrepreneur to help their economic to better. Because today also the small entrepreneur is struggling with the greedy economic policy in the world who are also using the IT. Thank you.
>> JAC SM KEE: I refer you to feminist Internet principle No. 7. Okay.
>> My name is Guda. A quick question about the content information, I think part of the problem those who decide and those who are providing those infrastructure are still very much within the dominate paradigm. Still very patriarchal. So the people who are still in charge of use very unfair and unjust anti‑Human Rights standards. But definitely not taking gender in to concern. So I think it is also part of the problem in a lot of these areas in Southeast Asia. So it is the same people. So need to think about that.
>> JAC SM KEE: Need to have different people that can affect the decision making with different kinds of values and norms basically.
>> Hi. I just have a quick announcement. My name is Betsy Brehman and we really value this discussion about mainstreaming Internet Governance within broader, more traditional Human Rights work and groups but especially more at‑risk groups, women, LGBT, ethnic and religious minorities. This is a key issue for us as we are trying to help promote these local voices around the world. Right now we have an open solicitation and people can apply for grants that are focused on advocacy. But in terms of this crowd I want you to be aware of that. Those applications are due in December and you can find information about that at the state department website, www.statedept.gov. We hope that more and more groups like yourselves will be able to be a part of that. So thank you.
>> JAC SM KEE: Thank you. So now that we are really sort of going in to things that we might be able to do in our individual capacities maybe it is a good time to turn the conversation to what can we do together as the coalition because the Dynamic Coalition meets every year at the IGF. We really try to strategize on stuff we can do together. We are not too good about working together in between IGF. We go off and report back to each other on what we have done which is not a bad thing. Maybe there are other things that we can explore, do much more concrete things that we might want to be able to do together from now until next year perhaps to address a specific gender and IG issues. Maybe one of the initiatives is let's explore whether it is possible to organise an IG school for women. Is this something that amongst all of us in this room maybe it is possible for us to join resources, the capacity to think about this planning for this in time for the next IGF to really identify ways to get advanced, kind of like more women to participate in this space.
So I will now leave it open for more suggestions and discussions on ‑‑ actually much more around rather than sharing insights and thoughts but really thinking through like strategies. What do you think ‑‑ what might we want to do together or individually for them even for the next five days, you know, throughout the IGF. Maybe that's something that we can note together. One of the things that we would like some help around this, around the gender report card for IG, for IGF. So this is something we have been doing for the year. Every single session you participate in just to get a sense of what is the ratio of women participants and men participants and to what extent was gender raised as a topic of analysis and discussion. And that will help us to get a sense of whether things have shifted or moved or not. So that's one suggestion we would like to share with you.
Any other thoughts?
>> Unfortunately until more suggestions come in I have a quick announcement to make from rights for all participants, very, very quick announcement because we have been talking about gender in IT and violence against women. We were able to finalize our research on violence against women in the digital spaces, technology led, technology based violence and I have copies here of the report we have made. And we just wanted to announce it and let you have it as you finish this session. It is about ‑‑ it talks about the current legislation in the country. It talks about the corporate policies or rather the policies of ISPs and it draws from case studies of violence against women online. Thanks Jac. Thanks for the opportunity.
>> JAC SM KEE: Great. But that's it. No more plugs. I warn you I am very strict. Laura?
>> Coming up with ideas right now real quick is like ‑‑ I don't know. So why don't we plan in this three days to meet like a smaller group and talk about this and make a real plan? Because plans like this like oh, I should do this and then in one year nobody is going to do anything. For real that's not going to happen.
>> JAC SM KEE: That's plan to plan. Every day we have one ‑‑ we have lunch. So whomever who would like to make it can make it. We will meet at the APC booth. Let's make that as a meeting point. So if you would like to meet up and plot some, more just meet up every day at 1 o'clock at the APC booth and then we have smaller groups of collaborative plotting. Sorry. What time is lunch? I lied. 12:30.
>> I said this last time, I think if you don't have the media to report on this, I think the agenda report card and everything is great. But it is not getting out. So I really do think that journalists need to write about it.
>> JAC SM KEE: We need a media strategy. Will you come for one of the lunch groups in which you will help us draw it? We have a bit ‑‑ I mean we have a ‑‑ okay. So CITA will bring four journalists to the lunchtime. Are there any journalists or media practitioners, bloggers can come at lunchtime? And then we can think about how to get the message out more strategically and tactically. Any other thoughts or suggestions or ideas? We still have about, how long do we have? No more? Is it not until 11? Oh, my God. I apologize. I really thought this session was until 11. And we have a presentation that we want to share with you but it is not possible now because I think ‑‑ but please go to gender.it.org. We really analyze the results from last year and the year before. Yes, the gender IGF report card. Go to www.gender.it.org. And we have a mailing list that we participate in things. We will probably add you if you have come here, and then we will let you know if you want to unsub. There is a sign‑in sheet that is going around.
Anyone else that wants to say something before we formally close this? So we were supposed to launch the feminist principles of the Internet. Here we have. We didn't really have time to go through it but consider it launched. Please pick up a copy as you are leaving and come find us at the APC booth. Thank you very much.
(Applause.).
(Session concluded at 10:37)
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This is being provided in rough‑draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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