Technology is a feminist issue. Technology is an issue for all feminists.
From 2 to 5 December, APC will join the 15th AWID International Forum in Bangkok, Thailand, which is both a global community event and a space of radical personal transformation that brings together feminist, women’s rights, gender justice, LBTQI+ and allied movements, in all our diversity and humanity, to connect, heal and thrive.
The AWID International Forum has always been a place to frame critical feminist issues, and more than ever it is critical that this space nurtures accessible, intentional and hopeful conversations about the different aspects of tech and its embeddedness in every aspect of feminist organising and movement building.
APC's aim is to bring this framing into the AWID Forum in the hope of bridging the conversations about feminist movement building/organising and digital technologies/infrastructures, from a much needed feminist and decolonising perspective that challenges power and the status quo. We want all feminists at AWID and beyond to understand and not be intimidated by the language and power of tech, to feel agency and empowerment in their engagement with tech, and to see feminist tech as a key strategy in our movements for feminist liberatory presents and futures.
Many members and partners in the APC network will be actively participating in various sessions as organisers, speakers and moderators, as well as hosting specific activities during the Forum that will advance our movements' connections and our advocacy around a feminist internet.
The Feminist Tech Gardens
In recent years, feminist techies have witnessed the massive expansion of digital infrastructure perpetuating colonial exploitation of Black and Indigenous communities and resources, with women human rights defenders often at the frontlines of these impacts and struggles. New forms of technology like generative artificial intelligence (AI) are not only subsidised through underpaid labour by the Global Majority, but are exacerbating harms through gender-based violence.
Technology is implicitly and explicitly embedded in gender-based violence, racism, homophobia, war and genocide, state surveillance, reproductive rights and health, public and civic participation, climate justice, feminist scholarship, mainstream publishing, and memory work. If we want technology that is feminist by design, we need spaces to contain and ground our dreams, enabling playfulness, experimentation and deep human connection in fertile soil to nurture and grow technology that is liberatory.
The Feminist Tech Gardens are the result of the collaboration between three feminist organisations that think deeply and critically about decolonising the internet and building fair, just, equitable, safe and feminist digital infrastructures: APC, Numun Fund and Whose Knowledge? All participants at the AWID Forum are invited to hands-on, interactive activities to re-discover and re-design our relationship with technology.
The Feminist Tech Gardens are diverse yet deeply interconnected ecosystems, with their own mood, energy and landscapes. The feminist digital rights conceptual umbrella for these spaces are the Feminist Principles of the Internet (FPI), a series of statements that offer a gender and sexual rights lens on critical internet-related rights.
Within the gardens, participants will find resources to cultivate and reclaim the digital and technological space of innovation with solidarity, hope and resistance. The gardens are interactive and nurturing spaces and at the same time they are deeply political. They are rooted in Global Majority practices and the perfect places for feminist cross-pollination, offering a reservoir of plurality of knowledge in connection with our territories, communal lands and ways of being and dreaming in life.
What are we growing in the gardens?
See the plans for the gardens here (coming soon): feminist.tech/gardens
And check out some of the APC sessions:
Entramados feministas descoloniales: tejiendo alianzas para la justicia digital y climática
Tuesday, 3 December | Time TBD. Organised by May First
Unlocking the future of feminist tech funding
Wednesday 4 December | 11:45 to 13:30 local time. Organised by Pollicy
This workshop equips grantmakers with insights into funding practices that transform, sustain, and strengthen digital rights and feminist tech communities. Focusing on feminist tech’s transformative impact in the global South, we’ll examine lessons from Feminist Civic Tech Funders like Numun Fund and leaders from feminist tech organisations. Pollicy will lead the conversation, sharing findings to reimagine Feminist Technology Philanthropies and #ShiftPower. The goal is to amplify feminist tech narratives, increase resources for data feminism, and advance feminist tech activism in the global South.
Internet Shutdown game
Thursday 5 December | 10:45 to 12:30 local time. Organised by APC
APC developed the Shutdown Game (https://shutdowngame.apc.org/) to create an engaging and informative training activity that highlights the methods of internet shutdowns and ways to counteract them. Designed as a Creative Commons game for adaptation, this interactive session will offer a fun, hands-on approach to exploring the technical intricacies of various shutdown models. Using real-world scenarios and "circumvention" cards, players will learn about the technical mechanisms behind shutdowns and the strategies available to navigate them. Suitable for diverse audiences, the game raises awareness of tactics used to restrict internet access and builds understanding of internet infrastructure and circumvention tools.
WHRD strategies challenging online violence
Thursday, 5 December | 10:45 to 12:30 local time. It will have Wordly interpretation and it is available virtually and in-person. Organised by Safety for Voices
A space for critical reflection and exchange of South-South experiences, which seeks to identify collective and community strategies to protect the voices of women defenders and nonbinary people in the digital environment, from a decolonial, integral and feminist protection approach, based on the recognition of the systematic violence we experience in the digital environment as an extension of patriarchal, racist and colonial violence.
Stay tuned for more updates! Follow #FeministTechGardens and #FeministTech in social media. Also, don't miss the Feminist Sound Bites we will be launching during the event!
Get in touch: gardens@feminist.tech
The AWID Forum downloadable and web-based app is available for download! It contains important information about the event, different ways to connect with participants and details on all the sessions. Visit this page to learn more.