Fatima: Technology allows you to delve into something that I think from my background of where I come from was something that was such an unconceivable option for me growing up. I've not been exposed to anything around technology until I started working.

Karen Banks: This is before internet. There was no internet. I'd never heard of the internet. I'd never used it. The most I'd done was teach myself word processing. I could type. My mum had taught me how to type when I was quite young. And... Beijing I guess was, Beijing in 95 was one of those really important sort of pivotal moments in my life in the last 35 years.

Beijing soundcast:

\- Women thank the Beijing in unprecedented numbers because we believe we do make a difference.  I believe each of us can and does make a difference. Here today, it is important to know that the global women's movement is alive and well.

Narrator (Jennifer): Are you ready to dive into the wonderful world of technology, feminism, and digital safety? Of course you are. But before we begin, let's take a moment to appreciate how far we've come.  I mean, do you remember the days when we had to dial up to access the internet?

Narrator (Ray): The sound of that connection could wake up the whole house. And don't even get me started on how slow it was. But hey, we made it through. And now we are living in an age where we wake up to new advancements in technology every single day. New AI, new apps, and new ways to navigate the internet.

Narrator (Jennifer): Yeah, totally. So in 1995, the Association for Progressive Communications, or APC, was part of a team of women who set up a communication center. And this was during the United Nations 4th World Conference on Women, which was hosted in Beijing.

Narrator (Jennifer): The center was really critical because it allowed women who were not connected to the Internet a chance to connect. The center also connected the Women's Conference to the rest of the world by allowing teams to share information from Beijing using radio, cable news, video feeds, fax, and even the Internet.

Narrator (Jennifer): It was a really powerful force that broke down geographical barriers and facilitated an openness and inclusivity that we still value today.

Narrator (Ray): Fast forward to now and APC has developed the Feminist Technology eXchange Safety Reboot. This is a training curriculum made up of several modules for trainers who work with feminist activists to use the internet safely, creatively, and strategically.

Narrator (Ray): In this podcast, we'll be speaking with some amazing people who have made their mark in tech and beyond.

Narrator (Jennifer): We explore the themes of the FTX modules and their relevance to our lives today. So get ready to travel back in time and then back to the present as we embark on this journey. My name is Jennifer Radloff.

Narrator (Ray): And my name is Rachel Wamoto. Welcome to this Feminist Internet Life.

Narrator (Jennifer): FTX stories of collaboration, creativity, and care.

(INTRO MUSIC)

Fatima: Technology was still very new. People were using computers at the time, mostly for word processing, and writing up documentation. That sort of was the scene around what we were trying to achieve with the computer center.

Karen Banks: We put together a team. It was 40 women, and I did look at this alien today, so I'm cheating a little bit. 40 women from 26 countries speaking 18 languages to go and set up something. Show, you know, show people, and show women, what this is all about.

Jennifer Radloff: Beijing tent thing. We're going back to 1995... Uh, Beijing plus what, what?

Narrator (Ray): So, Jenny here is a South African feminist activist and coordinator of APC's Feminists Tech eXchange work. She directs the program's capacity building strategy and is deeply interested in facilitation methodologies and holding space for activists.

Narrator (Jennifer): And Rachel's from Kenya and describes herself as a creative teacher of digital media things. She's also wildly passionate about audio and visual storytelling.

Narrator (Jennifer): And we will be chatting with Karen Banks, Erika Smith, and Fatima Bayat about where it all began for many feminist women in technology.

Narrator (Ray): And together they will explore the origins of the feminist tech movement and how it has evolved to what it is today.

Jennifer Radloff: So, maybe just like describe what it was like to be there. Why was there this  space? Apparently it wasn't a tent. It was this building with loads of computers run by women techies from all over the world.

Fatima: So, that was sort of the computer center where we were introducing women and organizations that were at the Beijing conference, uh, to this idea of email.

Erika: And so this, this, this was like setting the example, everywhere you looked, it was women, it was women learning, it was women, you know, in, in the back room doing all of the tech, it was women you went to for answers on tech, and that, I think, was a complete rarity, but in 1995, and that's so crazy, right? I'm not talking 1965,  you know, but in 1995, that was a rarity.

Fatima: We had all of these women that were waiting in queues to come and use the computer center and as you say, for some it was Email that they were familiar with because for others it was  a totally new experience.

Erika: You know, their joy at receiveing them as many of them had arranged for emails or had, just before they were leaving, they were getting online. And so like the ecstasy of: "Oh my God, I got a mail from home!". And that  just excitement when you discover something new, which is, you know, can be every day and every moment in technology was something that was on the faces of everybody in that room.

Karen: The curiosity may have brought women to the computer center, you know, like for their first ever, you know, experience of sending an email and that's, that's the way it happened.

Narrator (Jennifer): So, the 4th World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China in 1995, was a landmark event and it brought together women and activists from around the world to discuss issues related to gender equality, human rights and women's empowerment. One of the most important aspects of the conference for us was the computer center, which was located in a small town called Huairou, which is about 63 kilometers away from Beijing.

This center played a crucial role in history by providing women who couldn't access the internet in their cities and villages with a means to connect within, and after the conference. The tent facilitated a two way flow of information through various technologies, including radio, cable news, video feeds, and fax.

However, the most important technology that was new at the time was this thing we call the internet.

Narrator (Ray): For us, this allowed women from around the world who were participating in the conference a space to learn and share their perspectives. With this knowledge, we were creating a powerful force for communication and exchange of information across geographical divides. Today, this openness and inclusivity is still considered valuable by the APC.

Fatima: So, I'm going to start with setting a reminder of where we were at at the time with technology, right? It was 1995. I think for many, many people, organizations that we worked with in South Africa from my perspective, uh, technology was still very new.

People were using computers at the time, mostly for word processing and writing up documentation. And it was sort of the start of Internet services being provided and people being introduced to email.  And so that sort of was the scene around what we were trying to achieve with this computer center. What APC did do was, was to coordinate amongst all its members and its partners to get women techies to the event to help configure and set up the computer center.

Karen: So, I knew how to type. I understood the principles of it. I taught myself.  Uhm, but it wasn't, I guess the computer wasn't.  It wasn't something I was frightened of, you know, I was actually pretty curious about it. I wasn't scared, but I was  ready to get my hands sort of dirty with it, so to speak.

Karen: And the first one I came across would have been in these jumping jobs in London in the late 80s. And and then by the early 90s, I had found my way through that path to be working with what was effectively one of the founding members of APC, GreenNet in London. And my role there initially was to running really a kind of an international post office that itself in London was connected to the internet via leased lines.

But, then was working with these experimental connections over phone lines to lots of countries, particularly for GreenNet, we were connecting mainly with partners in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia.  1993, we knew that Beijing was coming. It was only two years away 4th UN World Conference on women and at that time APC had a little bit of experience of providing computer mediated services to NGOs who are attending UN conferences, which of course didn't provide any sort of technology to facilitate information and communication sharing, you just,  it was paper, still, you know, paper and pen stuff, really, uh, you know, photocopiers, typing documents up on web processors, printing, handing them, you know, getting everything out by hand, awful lot of that.

Uhm, but we had started experimenting with being there. So the first one would have been the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio.  Where APC staff, very small teams would type out really important information coming out of these processes, which were exclusively, there wasn't, you just weren't able to participate in these processes as an NGO.

Beijing soundcast:

- The challenge really does not lie with the leaders, the challenge lies with us as individuals, in our own countries, in our own communities.

Erika: These were these amazing sessions for civil society to really express and organize and mobilize together. And now with technology being introduced, it wasn't just a fax tree network. It wasn't, you know, photocopies, that were incredibly powerful. I'm not trying to diss those. We all relied on them. But now it was so much faster. It was so much more possible to get together and see what other places were experiencing and how those contexts were playing out.

Jennifer Radloff: What's so beautiful is what, you know, the connections you made right in the beginning about typing, you know, about this safe space for women in tech, how people... And yeah, and the way that APC still works the way we did in, in, in the olden days where we work with individuals, collectives, organizations, the work is not done just as APC. I mean, and that's just the beauty and the richness. I mean, maybe you could also speak to how this grew the APC women's networking support program. I think that's what it was called way back when. Uhm, because it feels like it was a catalyst of something for women's networking support program.

Karen: I guess you just, you find your way to people that you have, you feel an affinity with or you share things in common with, and of course that largely led me to other women in, not, not exclusively, but largely other women working in other organizations who were not  always having a great time where they were, they were dealing with, you know, some pretty good old fashioned, you know, sort of, uh, sexism and, and patriarchal behavior from colleagues, most of whom were techies.

Karen Banks: So it was, you know, very much that kind of male techie dominated world that, that we were working in. That, that kind of dynamic was still very much there in, in many instances. And that's when we decided that it would be good to create a network where we could support one another. And, uh, share experiences with another, and strategize together.

And that really led, you know, like, once we'd sort of formed that inaugural support network, which was, we called the Women's... APC Women's Networking, APC Women's Networking Support Program. I'm so glad there's an easier acronym now. So for two years, we worked,  very intentionally to identify women, women's rights activists in as many countries as we could, who might have been interested in getting involved in the regional processes in the run up to the Beijing World Conference.

And that's really what, what we did was we, we wanted to outreach to women who could be I guess sort of be champions, if you like, who were curious, who were interested in learning about technology uhm, and using it in their work.

Erika: I remember so clearly that there had been a call to the Women's networking support program because we were all participating to some degree in a network of  people who were helping with ICTs in some way, so it wasn't all necessarily techies, and there was a call out to APC members at the time for women who could go and help in the  Beijing process. And I remember writing the coordinator at the time, uh, Edie, Edie Farwell and saying, I'm not a techie, but I would love to go if I can help in any way. And she wrote back immediately and said, and by this time I was working at La Neta doing user support. I was specifically training women about how to help them to get online.

We were using, we were using DOS systems. Uhm , So anyway, I remember Edie Farwell writing back saying "no, we need people who aren't techie. In fact, we don't want techies because sometimes techies are hard to understand. We need people to actually work with people  and help them to get online." So, that would be perfect. I mean, just remember  being so excited that my  profile could actually be useful there.

Fatima: I recall being at, uh, Beijing a few days prior to the main event. And we were hosted in sort of the, the NGO setting was away from the big city, from Beijing itself where the main conference took place. Uhm, and I think we were maybe about two hours away from, from the city. And this rural village that had been erected, we were told pretty much six weeks before the actual conference. So, it was amazing because there were these apartment blocks that had been created around the main conferencing area. That had just been built literally for the purposes of this conference.

Jennifer: If you want to move on to maybe a bit about those computer centers we set up in, in the center.

Fatima: So the, the Women Tech team, there were about 10 of us that were there prior to the main event and we were trying to set up the computer labs, et cetera.  And, we would sneak out because we had curfew and we would often just sneak out after hours or just stay in the computer lab beyond our curfew time and continue to try and, you know, put all the cables together, the electricals, connect the keyboards, connect the mice.

I had to fiddle around with plugs that often weren't working because it was a different electrical power set.  So it was, it was a lot of hard work, but a lot of fun and getting to know people I'd never met with before. I'd never communicated with, we were just this group of women that knew that we had to try and connect all these computers up and somehow get it connected to the, the main server in San Francisco.

And yeah, we found a common calling, I think, in a way of working with each other and enjoying the experience and learning from each other.

Karen Banks: Uhm, about half of them were from APC , from organizations that were members of APC and half weren't. And I found that also so interesting because I think something that's always run through our kind of DNA, the way we work, uh, certainly the Women's Rights Program and also APC, it's the importance of partnerships. I think just that, that for me was very interesting that there was a real diversity in the team. Diversity of skills and experience and capacity. So we had, I'd say half a dozen hardcore techies. And then we had about four or five other techies who, to be honest, most of the time they seem to just be crawling around on the floors, looking for cables, plugging things in, taking them out, fixing things.

So we had a server room full of servers and that was sort of the guts of the, of the infrastructure.

Fatima: Sarah was one of the women that was working with me on, in the fishbowl. I hadn't forgotten that's what we called that back room.

Erika: We knew about, you know, the women techies behind the fishbowl walls. There was, there was like windows in this back room that, you have to imagine that what was happening in Huairou, you had to go, come in on stairs and walked across sort of an empty part of a hall.

And we were in like the rear part of the hall, but it was huge. It was like two stories, three stories high. It was very, full of air and the, and the computers were all set up in rows, I think at least seven, eight rows of computers and in each row, probably, uhm, probably like 10 computers, and there was a middle aisle. And then the back room was like this glass paint, uhm , off room. And I remember hearing that they stayed up all night, hiding under the table so they couldn't be seen in the glass. In the big glass window, but I wasn't with them. Those were like the, they were just always intensely working together. And I was in the front, I was like handling the list of who could come and take a computer next and getting people onto their computer and showing them how to get connected. I remember being the one calling off the list. So I had the joy and pleasure of meeting every single woman who's walked into that computer room in every single place that they came from.

Fatima: I just remember the experience being frightening on the one hand because we had all of these women that were waiting in queues to come in and use the computer center and as you stay. For some it was email that they were familiar with and for others, it was a totally new experience.

And so I think there was the sense of pressure and importance of ensuring that we were able in the tech room with women techies there, that we were able to connect these people to their loved ones, but to the mission of what they were there to achieve. And so the partners that we worked with was... there was a woman from, if I remember it was Russia, and I, I'm afraid I can't remember her name.

I'd never met her before, but she was a volunteer to the group. She wasn't really part of the APC. I'm not exactly sure how Karen Banks had met up with her, but she was one of the techies that supported us. And she knew a lot about the hardware and I learned a lot from her.

And then there was Sarah and I who knew the APC system and how to make it connect through telephone connection, through a dial up connection, to the server host in San Francisco. And I think when that failed, our backup, if I recall, was GreenNet in the UK. So we would make phone calls, I think on the hour, every hour to, to store and forward messages and download sort of local content for the website so that we had a local cache of website information. It wasn't a permanent connection, it wasn't full time like we have right now, it was literally a dial up at the time.

Narrator (Ray): As we delve deeper into what we're calling the Beijing Tent Project, we are reminded of the diverse group of individuals who came together to make it happen.

Beijing soundscape:

- How can these international instruments (...) really be brought home to us in our local communities in ways that can really make a difference?
- I  think you know it from down there. What's after this?
- Chest area out. And what's after that?
- Who's taking those? Massaging the arms.
- Massaging the arms, right. Look, look at the hand that's down.
- Watch out for the next battle.
- That focus is more on power too. Or and power. You really have to work hard.
- I disagree with that because I have worked in organizations where they would have hired leadership women and they manage to, manage to replicate abuses.  If you do not change the way the abuses take place, it doesn't matter who's on top. They would screw people.

Karen: So we had about 10 or 15 women, young Chinese women, who also joined our team. And I think it's something we don't really... Talk about as much when we think about that team and they were very important. They're a critical sort of partner in that in that venture. So we probably had more like 50 or 60 women.  We had two staff who spoke Chinese so we had to rely on them heavily to communicate between the two, but you know, it kind of wasn't a barrier because we, we were all there for the same reason. We were all totally committed to creating this center that was going to be for, and I think it was about 30,000  women, came to Huairou, came to the NGO forum that was attached to the Beijing World Conference. Uh, of those 30,000, I think at least sort of 3,000 people would have sent their first ever e-mail. I mean, they just never done it before. It was a completely new experience.

Erika: And I can so clearly remember this one young woman, we couldn't really talk. But she managed, I don't know how, but it was Tom Cruise. I mean, what she wanted to see was Tom Cruise and somehow we got up a website that had a picture of Tom Cruise on it and just so excited.

And this is something that was really important because we had no idea what was actually going to be seen, how much connectivity was actually going to be achieved, because the, the role of censorship, even at that time in China was very huge. And in fact, we had a whole team working out of the UK, who was also like, we were prepared to send missives through them because we were not sure if the center would be shut down.

I never experienced it shut down. I never experienced censorship. And I think we were really fortunate because  I think a lot of the people came through did have emails of some sort, but web pages were really new.

Jennifer Radloff: I don't know, we're all  accidental trainers, accidental feminists in a way, you know, it just is.

It's like you talk about care and it's so hard to pin it down because people... Just looked after each other and respected diversity, respected and now there's so much naming around it. Yeah, so I don't know if you want to talk a little bit to that. When did you finally admit to  yourself that you were a trainer and had the confidence?

Karen Banks: I don't think anyone in that team would have necessarily called themselves a trainer. I think a lot of the women would have, uhm , in the team was self taught. We had a lot of experience of supporting maybe people using, at that time sort of email.  But in terms of having any sort of formal approach to the way we worked or supported others and trained others or built capacity, I really don't know that we ever even had those kinds of conversations. I think what we had was a sensitivity to the importance of contextualizing whatever it was that we were doing with women, in Beijing.

Fatima: Yeah, we had support, you know, when things would fall over or we saw that things weren't working, we didn't always tell people, but it would stay over at night and try and talk to the tech, community at IGC in San Francisco and at GreenNet, the tech is there to try and help us figure out what was going on.

So, there was a lot of phone calls between, between us and just trying to work things out. But there was also just the hardware stuff and things like we hadn't factored in language, keyboards, you know, the keyboards we had were all just, uhm, normal English keyboards, US or UK settings. So I recall this one time when one of the women came to us from, from the main computer lab and said: "Can one of you techies come help us set up  an Arabic keyboard?"

There's somebody that's never used email before and she's Arabic speaking. We can, we have somebody that can translate, but she can't communicate with anybody back home because the keyboard is in English. And I recall that, you know, I, I'd met somebody on the floor that had come to support, that was Arabic speaking.

And so I looked up for the person, found her. And chatted to her and said, well, "do you by any chance know how to clear down the settings on this machine and set it to Arabic?" And lo and behold, she, you know, obviously knew how to do it. Because she was, as it turns out, we found out later that she was a systems administrator at a big corporate company.

And she was one of the women there that was very quiet on the side, but knew how to do these amazing things. And so for the rest of that, that week that we were there, she came to join us in the fishbowl and assisted us with some things. And that was this amazing thing that happened in Beijing. As we met all of these wonderful, capable women techies, that we might never have met otherwise. So I think that that's one of the things about that experience that will always stay with, stick with me, is just the power in how women can unite. And when we need to make something happen, we make it happen.

Erika: I remember, you know, half of the trainings was translating DOS commands into Spanish and, you know, having like tips and memory triggers so that people could remember these silly commands that were only in English. So, it was not at all intuitive. And as, uhm , operating systems changed and as mice were introduced, a mouse was possible, et cetera.

Those things also made, learning technology easier. Just things as simple as language or as interface or as, devices did make a huge difference in terms of the training process. I remember, too, thinking, and maybe this did happen with other trainers there, but I remember, too, thinking, you know, we needed to have had games on how to use the mouse, and because I know that later Mota Mujer was very involved in this process with working with rural women who had not had access to computers would actually start by playing games and getting people acclimated to the mouse. And we would later say in research in this area of whose hand is on the mouse, which is why I'm just so just embarrassed that the one of the few photos that I've seen out was me with my mouse showing someone how to use something on the computer.

Karen Banks: The only computers were in the communication center, and that was really being used to send information. And it was being used by people who were like journalists and media professionals. So, what happened, what was really happening was that we had these conversations with women who were interested and curious, they may have been...  Media activists or activists working around any thematic issue, that they wanted to learn more about what it all meant and how does it work.

You know, because of course if you haven't ever used it before, well what do you mean you can send information? 8,000 miles and it doesn't cost anything. So, even just having conversations about how it works, the curiosity may have brought women to the computer center, you know, like for their first ever, you know, experience of sending an email.

So, we really sort of quote, you know, go out into the, into the Huairou pavilions and talk to people. You know, this is what we're doing. You might, might be interested in this. It might be useful for you in these ways.  Come, come and visit.

Narrator (Jennifer): The conference played a significant role in the birthing of bold and open feminist techies and a feminist language in technology. The individuals encountered at the conference also played a crucial role in facilitating this change.

Fatima: The one thing for me about Beijing that I think was very important was that it was a catalyst for coming back to South Africa and really seeing what was possible  in thinking how technology could be used to further involvement of young women.

I remember coming back from that and talking to Andrieta Esterházy, who was the director at SangoNet, where I was based in, who had, with Karen Banks and Edie Farwell at IGC and at GreenNet, had kind of orchestrated this gathering of the women techies. And remember going back and she said to me: "Well , Fatima, what, what have you learned? What would you like to see happening?" And I remember feeling confident enough to say, we really do need to start doing more training of women because it's just amazing.

So, I remember when, when we did the technical training on setting up wifi networks. It was terrifying for me as well. I don't have a computer science degree or any formal education in IT. I learned all of this through experience, through playing. It's about remembering what it felt like the first time you touched a computer. And how scary it felt. But also how when you did realize the power you had and what you could do with it.

Erika: And I remember so clearly, I learned from Sarah Masters, and I have told this story many a time. Sarah Masters was working at GreenNet at the time. She was also looking at women living under Muslim law. And Sarah showed me how to... ping. So, this gives you an idea of how non techie I was, right? I had no idea what a ping was, to see how much latency there was in the network or, you know, to see the other side responding as you did a ping was just like, "Oh!"

Beijing soundscape:

- I decided to not wear black because I am black and I wanted to wear a dress that might show that the sun shall not, shall rise.
- There is hope, no matter how subjugated we feel, no matter how hopeless we feel. In the midst of all of you, we feel that the sun shall rise.  And, so we join all of you, and we continue to hope that we shall share the solidarity that we have seen here this evening. May you have peace when you go home.

Jennifer Radloff: It all just feels like people were intuitively activist and intuitively feminist. But is there anything that you want to talk about in terms of the shift from gender and ICTs to calling it feminist? Or, is there anything that you feel you can articulate around that?

Erika: Still in 1995, there was that euphoria of ICT solutionism and the panacea of all, or is it panacea of  all problems, you know, it's very much an ICT for development, period. And I think we've also really moved beyond that, and seen rather a lot of different, real harm and also nuances as the world becomes technified, in so many levels, not, you know, environmentally in cultural invasion and colonization.

And I remember thinking that at that time, and it's relevant, the Tom Cruise point is relevant because the internet for pleasure, the internet for, you know, for me doing what I want to do may seem very individualist, but I think that we learned a lot about prioritizing what communities need and want, and so later on, you know, APC would work with the Erotics Project of, you know, the exploratory research on sexuality in ICTs, and try to understand what doors were opened and closed for, for example, LGBTQI+ community and so really and obviously the only open door wasn't just about pleasure, but not to dismiss it, not to have such a utilitarian or you solutionist view to understand also that a lot of feminist approach to technology is looking at relationship and networking and communication in a really different way. It's not always to achieve a certain thing. So all of these things, you know, we're bubbling around in this entire process in Beijing. What we don't want is to make it into another space to be afraid of. And so often, even now, discussions about gender and the internet and tech is all about digital safety and being safe online and about gender, you know, online gender based violence. And that isn't the equivalency. The equivalency should still be possibility. How can this serve us? How can this serve our organizing? How can this serve me? How can I have fun?

Narrator (Ray): In the coming episodes, we will introduce you to the feminist technology exchange approach and methodology of the APC. One of the major focus areas of the FTX is our curriculum, which we call The FTX Safety Reboot.

This set of modules is a feminist resource on digital safety and care for trainers who work with women's rights and sexual rights activists to use the internet safely, creatively...

Narrator (Jennifer): ... and we would really like to thank Erica Smith, Fatima Bayat, and Karen Banks for taking us down this important historical journey.

Narrator (Ray): This episode is a production from the Association for Progressive Communications Women's Rights Program and their Our Voices, Our Futures projects.

Narrator (Jennifer): This feminist internet life FTX stories of collaboration, creativity, and care is produced by Rachel Wamoto, Nadege, and Bruns.

Narrator (Ray): Your hosts are Jennifer Radloff and me, Rachel Wamoto.

Narrator (Jennifer): See you next time. See you next time.