Image depicts China’s popular vlogger Papi Jiang The Global Information Society Watch report last year (GISWatch) dealt explicitly with internet and sexual rights, and this year the report examines the link between economic, social, cultural (ESC) rights and the internet . ESC rights are fundamental to movements that deal with gender – it is women, trans and gender non conforming people who face immense struggle in relation to work, parity and harassment at the workplace; they struggle to form unions and to ensure their basic needs of the right to food and shelter. It is women and gender nonconforming people who are most vulnerable in social and cultural contexts, because of transgressions outside of heteronormativity. Whether the international covenant on ESC rights has as per the United Nations agenda ‘mainstreamed’ gender within its own mandate, ESC rights remain a high priority for women’s movements everywhere, and for those lobbying and working with trans and gender nonconforming people.
The report looks at the link between ESC rights and the internet in several countries, and from a multitude of systems of governance, whether that of socialism and the welfare state, or the semi-functional welfare schemes in parts of Asia and Africa (Uganda, Cambodia), and even the relatively privileged parts of the world, like Spain.
Read the full feminist talk in GenderIT.org.