The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. 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 event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Renata Baltar. I'll be the moderator of the session.
First of all, I'd like to ask you to sit with us here, if you want to, of course. So we are here to ‑‑ for the workshop Doxxing Women: Privacy protections against gender violence. Here with us we have Flavia Lefevre and Louise Hurel, Kemly Camacho from Sula Bastu. we have Ericka Smith from APC and we have Gustavo here and, of course, all of you.
So the main purpose of this workshop is to discuss the problem on online violence against women and gender‑fluid Internet users. The speakers will introduce the discussion, and the idea here is to have interactive and participative sessions with help from all of you. So Louise, the mic is yours.
>> LOUISE MARIE HUREL: Hi, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for introducing me. It's a real pleasure to take this time to talk to all of you about some of the main issues we have been facing in the past few years. I'm for the center for technology and society of FGV located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I'm also part of the youth observatory and the youth IGF program.
First of all, I thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be here and take part in the discussion. I want to briefly talk about the intersection of some conceptual and practical challenges when thinks about the relationship between gender, Internet Governance and discrimination.
Mostly I seek to raise some questions together. I would like to start out quoting part of the young Latin‑American women declaration. It was an outcome of the collaborative effort between some girls from the youth observatory for the BPF gender.
Gender is part of us. It is socially bonded to our bodies, to our actions, to our way of seeing the world and to our every move. Along with it, we encounter battles, constraints that we seek to navigate be it online or offline. Gender is a social cultural construct that determines based on essential processes what a woman and a man should or shouldn't do.
In the Internet the same thing happens, and we find important gender gaps that limit women's rights to access, interact, and create online. These restrictions are determined by diverse factors like education, economic resources, and the reasons why a person wants to be connected once there's a possible to access the Internet. So just going back to a little bit of thoughts.
Being connected for some of us is a normal thing 24/7 with smartphones and laptops in front of us. That isn't a global reality, especially for women. According to the women's rights online report, nine out of ten that are not connected come from the developing world.
Within these larger statistics, women are normally less likely to be connected than men, even when levels of education and income are similar. It seems like we face sin tris and inequalities from many sides. Gender violence cannot be evaluated and detached from questions regarding access.
The cross‑pollination between violence and access leads us to questions such as what are these women accessing? Do they feel safe online? Do they actually have privacy? Are they more exposed? These are a myriad of questions that come up. With this in mind, I'll share part of the work that the girls from the youth observatory have been working on and especially in creating this input to the BPF gender and access this year.
What finally got us to the declaration of young women in Latin America. I'd like to highlight this work due to one particular aspect. Through it we sought to express our concerns and to have greater lie dog between what you face in our daily lives and connect it with a broader theme such as access, violence, security and privacy.
However, and most importantly, we gather several different narratives from young women throughout the region, and with their permission, of course, we created a section dedicated to this. Women were able to actually express themselves and it might not be identified but they could through their narratives and stories shared in the declarations, they could actually expose some of the challenges that they faced in their work life, in the way they felt about their looks and the way they felt about their relationship between themselves and what was around them. How the Internet served as a tool and also the violent behavior and discrimination that they faced.
The Internet should be a place for women to be able to resist and channel and also ‑‑ also a channel for voicing perspectives. When we talk about gender we're not talking about a field of study in politics and relations, which we so commonly and naturally are embedded in. We are talking about something that is personal. While some of us think that that maybe a problem, I tend to disagree with that.
Gender is part of us, and it's part of our ongoing identity construction. It cuts across how we act, how we dress, how we feel about ourselves, how we interact. It is an ongoing process of reproduction and restructurization that is simultaneously online and offline. That is why I think we should so deeply be sensitive to issues regarding doxxing and to practices that intrude in living and that we as women are more exposed. I would note that gender does not speak for itself. It gives meaning and complexity as you understand the personal variables that come along with it. That is, I believe that when assessing online harassment, doxxing, stalking, privacy of views, we must go beyond binaries and embrace race, income, social disparities as starting points for understanding the complexity and most of all promoting dialogue. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Louise, for sharing with us your perspective of gender. Now I'll give the mic to Flavia.
>> FLAVIA LEFEVRE GUIMARAES: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm from a Brazilian consumers' association, and I'm also a representative of Civil Society in Internet staring committee in Brazil. Thank you, Renata. I don't know if Akino is here for the invitation.
I would like to start by highlights the United Nations 2015 report about cyber violence against women and girls. Worldwide wake‑up call is a report by the Broadbent commission for digital development working group on broadband and gender of the United Nations. According to the report, the statistics give us peace and prosperity for all enjoyment in the charter of the United Nations and in particular to the goals of the sustainable development that puts gender, equality, and empowerment of a woman as a key to its achievement.
The report brings its statistics that review a scenario that imposes action of the public authorities. 73% of women are abused online. This situation is a result of cultural and educational issues.
A 2014 survey conducted by data popular institute in Brazil shows that 43% of the young people witnessed violence against their mother, but only 47% of them interfered in their mother's defense. The same survey shows that few people admit spontaneously that there are violent actions in relationships. However, when encouraged, they admit that they have committed or suffered violence. Even so, the violence is more associated with physical aggression. Among the forms of violence are many Internet abuses, such as pornography for revenge, invasion of computers, blackmail among others.
What happens most are cases of ex‑boyfriends or partners who divulge intimacy breaking the trust of the woman for revenge for rejection of the partner. A few decades ago, the male chauvinist took revenge by physical violence. Today he has the alternative to react with symbolic violence, which opposes emotional suffering to the victim by exposing scenes and images of their intimacy to the public with more damage often irreparable. Sorry.
Research shows that the Internet is used for effective relationships and for sexual activities. 40% of women and 48% of men have already had relationships with someone they met on the Internet. 15% of women and 24% of men practice sex with people they knew, and 40% of the women and 27% of men practice sex with one or more people. A significant part of the threats and violence occurring in the Internet environment happen especially because there is a sense of freedom on the Internet, both of women and girls, who feel more willing to expose themselves than of men and boys to attack with the feeling of anonymity and impunity.
There is a degree of ignorance about risks and mechanisms of defense and protection. The voices in the systems are vulnerable to private breaches. Considering that the Internet encouraging various forms of communication, exposure and effective and sexual manifestations and the sense of impunity, it's necessary to adopt public policies in order to educate women and girls about the risks and regarding the adoption of security measures against invasions of privacy established minimally going to safety parameters for the manufacturers of the devices.
In Brazil the rule of removing content from the Internet is article 19 which established the need for a judicial order with the objective of guaranteed freedom of expression. However, the same law established in the inception to exclude the need for a judicial order when it comes to images, videos and other materials containing nudity or sexual of a private nature without the authorization of the participants when they have received a note by the participant or his or her legal representative.
We have also the article 241 of the statute of the child and adolescent that criminalize selling or exposing the photo or video sale or offer exchange made available to transit to publish by my means including by computer or telematic system, photograph or video or other ready that explains explicit or pornography scene involving a child. There is bill 555 in 2013, which amends the law which deals with physical, psychological, sexual and moral violence against women in a family environment to create mechanisms to combat acts against women on the Internet or other forms of propagating information.
The last one. Breach of privacy is understood as the dissemination through the Internet or in any other means of propagating information without the express consent of image information, personal data, videos, or photos of the women obtained in the construct of domestic relations, cohabitation or hospitality. The law says also in case of application of 7 that I read now, the dredge we were under from the services provided a social network website hosting, blog hosting, by telephone or any other service or information removed within 24 hours the content that violates the woman's intimacy.
The criminalization of domestic violence against women under the law passed in 2006, and the create of women's policy have led a significant reduction of violence against women. The number of homicides decreased 10% between 2006 and 2015. Thus, it is important that if it's enforcement of existing law and support for 5.55 in 2013, with minimum modification such as abuse and abusive content immediately after communication to end impunity.
Establishing public policies to educate women and girls and men and boys about the risks of exposure on the Internet and ways to defend themselves against violence. Encourage the creation of psychological support centers for women and girls who are victims of violence and establishing public policies for the production of the devices less vulnerable to attacks and invasions. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you for sharing with us those statistics and what we are doing in Brazil in terms of law measures to fight violence against women.
Now I'll pass of mic for Gustavo.
>> GUSTAVO PAVIA: Thank you, Renata. So my name is Gustavo Paiva. My reason here is to talk a little bit about LGBT experiences, let's talk about gender and sexualities, okay? Louise mentioned earlier that gender is something that's essential to our identity. Some people have, let's say, a more masculine gender expression and some are more feminine, and that's not limited to your sexuality. There are men who are more feminine, and there are women who are more masculine.
If you look at the real space around us in our countries, we will easily see that people whose sex that is different from their gender expression often are victims of some harassment or bullying, shall we say. It's not in my personal life. I've seen it plenty.
Gay people, lesbians who have, let's say, very feminine both gay and straight and masculine women both straight and lesbians are often victims of harassment, of the insults, of bullying. So but gender is the thing. Gender is so important to us.
If ‑‑ just think about it. If today suddenly your body, everything you have of your self‑image changed, wouldn't you be devastated? So that's the thing. When we get to the topic of doxxing, the truth is that people who are gender nonconforming are big targets of abuse online. That's just a reality. We have seen lately many news, many organized groups who try to doxx people who are gender nonconforming. That's not only coming from the straight community. It's even from the LGBT community and there's harassment to people that are generally nonconforming. That's just a reality. Because you're LGBT it does not mean, it does not instantly make you accepting of different perspectives.
Being gay or lesbian or bisexual or trans, that does not necessarily make you that person. That does not make you an accepting person. Each one of us has to struggle in our lives. Being accepting is not only being accepting to trans people. It's the continuous struggle, the continuous never‑ending psychological struggle to always expand our barriers. Always expand or thinking. Some years ago I did not know what it was, the very concept of genders.
To this day I don't have much experience with this population, I do not, but to be accepting is to have this conscious decision of being open to discussion, of being open to new perspectives, and even if you disagree, even if you do not believe, let's say, the rationale behind it is legitimate and logical. If you disagree to be accepting is to not interfere.
We don't need to interfere with people whose gender expression is different from ours, because I was talking about this with Louise yesterday. The very frameworks we use to understand gender and divergent expression can change. Each individual might have a very different framework for gender expression. Some people, that is a commonly thought on feminist populations that think that gender ‑‑ that the gender norms are unhealthy, and that it is desirable for them to be abolished.
That's a perspective on gender. It's not my perspective. Personally, I believe that gender can be understood with masculinity and femininity is a set of rituals and some can be both. You can be a masculine man and have a sensitive side and be comprehensive. That's not bad. I believe that people can be both masculine and feminine. That's my perspective.
Some people do believe that gender norms should be abolished. That's okay. That's your opinion. That's your thought. Even if it is ‑‑ I do agree to a certain point. If you disagree, it is civil. It's polite. It's human to respect different positions. That's why the practice of doxxing is ‑‑ even if it's not illegal. Even if it weren't, it's not civil. It is wrong.
Even if you think that a certain gender expression is ridiculous, even if you think it's stupid, that's not your place. That someone's gender and identity, and why do you have to judge them? Because you're not like them, that's it? That's just childish. That's all I had to say. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Gustavo. That was a very special approach of gender fluid and LGBT questions. Now I'll give the mic to Erika Smith from APC.
>> ERIKA SMITH: So I have a question for you all. You've been mentioning the word doxxing, and do people know what doxxing is? Because whenever we use that word in training where I live, which is here, nobody knows what it is. We say doxxing, and nobody knows what that is. That's what you need to think about, what exactly are we talking about, and is inherently bad?
Anyway, so when we talk about doxxing, it's something that any of us can do. It's just like any of us could be a troll, too. It's not necessarily bad, right? So doxxing is just being very meticulous about documenting and getting all the possible details there can be about someone online and bringing them altogether, right? I mean that would be ‑‑ I'm sure you could get a much better and more technical definition.
I don't mean to be too simplistic here. I want to make sure that's clear. It can entail illegal activity to get at that information, right? I think that this possibility of connecting sort of all the different dots available online or that you find out revelations about someone is really important to understand that's what it's about. I think that a lot of times when we look at violence against women and against LBGTQI people, et cetera, that experience doxxing, what's happening is they may be able to ‑‑ women in one space and with one community and feel very comfortable about sharing.
For some reason maybe they're doing it quite privately, and they have excellent privacy controls, right? Maybe the Facebook group they are in has one of their friends, her partner, also is in that group because he has access or she has access to the passwords. So suddenly that information she felt was private and the debate going on there was private is actually not so private.
And then information can leak out. So all of these ‑‑ so I think that a lot of the times when we talk about doxxing or violence online or we talk about some of the harmful impacts of these things, it's like it's your fault. You know. You really shouldn't have published that. You should have thought twice, really. And certainly a lot of it is ‑‑ I mean, there's a wonderful thing on the way‑back machine. That's the archive.org, check it out.
It's a very old history on the Internet, and a lot of things are saved there that we didn't think would be connected to us. When we start to talk about these things, it's really important to understand the impact of it. In some countries there's a lot more available online because of white pages and reverse phone number lookup. It's freely available online.
So the ease of doxxing isn't necessarily information that you even provided. It could be your government so nice about having that registration online, right? So just to put that out there, because I think a lot of times, as with so many things, when you're victimized, you could get blamed for being a victim. They have little actions that sort of really screw us over, and one of those might be the real main policy that Facebook established and really messed up a lot of people's lives, especially many trans people who were suddenly leading perhaps two lives very safely and comfortably as they transitions.
Facebook, said I'm sorry afterwards and there was a coalition that many of you participated in, et cetera, that said this isn't okay, right? We need to be looking at this a lot more ‑‑ it's a lot more nuances and complex, and certainly when we're working with women who have been victims of violence online and harassment, it's ‑‑ it's a huge concern when we see that the companies themselves or even some state policies themselves help people get at this information.
So that we find very disturbing, and I think it's a question for all of us, and that's part of ‑‑ that's one of the reasons why I think many of us got interested in Internet Governance. Having that online there.
Another example of that is the whole debate around ICANN and eliminating the privacy option. If you have privacy around who is the domain holder and how important that is if you have a site very controversial and you don't want people to know that you are the one that created that domain. By the way, when you signed up for it and gave your street address, you don't want people to know that that's where you live, because you don't have any other address and you have to put an address, you know? It's things like that.
I think there's also another thing that's going on, and it's that interconnection of dots now is fun and investigative. It's a game to doxx. So if you are an anonymous blogger or amazing author, it's a game to doxx you.
One can understand why it might be fun if you like to game, if you like to do research and investigative stuff. It's also really upsetting that now, you know, there's a story about this girl who was attacked. Let's find out who she was and let's see if she's telling the truth and where does she live?
It's a game, and it's sort of absent ‑‑ we can question why this game is fun and exciting to expose people in this way, given the structure of everything that was said by each one of the previous people. I think that's very concerning, and it's ‑‑ it's something that I think we should also talk about.
What can we do about this, and what would we do differently other than saying be really careful about what you publish online? You're concerned about these things, so you come to the IGF, and there's no camera zone here, by the way. Hi! All the faces are able for people to be checked out, and everything is transparent. All of us are registered, right? That's good.
That's what the IGF is about. It's about transparency, but it also can have an unintended side effect, because we're now officially registered in this wonderful world of the Internet, right? That's another way to look at this.
So I would just add one more point. I think there's a lot of tools out there, but one of the things that we've ‑‑ when you use terms like doxx and you tell people in workshops search for yourself, sometimes it can be very scary, in fact. They find out a lot. It's very good practice to begin to search for yourself, but there are a lot of basic tools out there, and one of the things we've seen as we began to see repeated attacks that seemed to have certain coincidences against journalists and defenders here in Mexico was the ability to use basic community manager tools and social networking tools to understand more about the people who are attacking you online.
So I mean, I invite you all ‑‑ I'm saying that gaming part of it is bad, but it's also good. We can explore more tools and play around. Using Google alert whether your name or another name pops up or your aggressor and his tag pops up. Recording incidents constantly if you're being harassed.
They're used against us, and we can use them to better understand the situation and see if something serious is happening or if this is just the everyday bread and butter of being an LBGTQI person online or feminist online or what have you or a journalist or just a woman online can be subtle to attack.
We can talk more about some of the things that we've done if it's useful. It's interesting to hear from all of you and what you think about it after our last speaker.
>> MODERATOR: So I'm going to pass the mic to our last speaker so you guys can all participate and give your personal experience and stuff.
>> KEMLY CAMACHO: First of all, I want to say I regret to speak English in Mexico, okay? What I want to share with you is our experience during the last five days here in Costa Rica where we have created the beloved project. The name is ICT-IS, and this project is a project to integrate more women into ICT sectors, okay, in general, okay?
But one of the stronger strategies of this project is to create a strong and lively network of women in IT. We have at this moment 400 women in IT. Women, professional women setting up computer networks and all the related, and it is a network that is from women professional from students, from women that are in the highest ‑‑ the technical schools.
All of them are interested and working and or studying in the IT sector. Then what I want to bring is their perspective and their reflection around the technology. We have five years working in these projects, and we meet each eight weeks to reflect and to discuss about technology and also to develop actions on the field because what we are trying to create is a real ICT polls with the leadership of women. This is what we want to create.
But then what I wanted to bring here is maybe another perspective based in the reflection that we have altogether. First is the question, why we, as humans, are creating such a violent environment online and offline? Why we are doing that. Why, as society, created technology that would implement so much the violent context. Why? Who is creating this technology? Why are we creating this technology? Who is creating the technology that is moving these words, and how does this technology created, which is the process to develop and create this technology?
I think we have to go to these very specific questions, these technologies in the violent environment and why we increase it. We believe that the technology is a critical artifact. Technology is culturally related with the reference. Then we ‑‑ the technology at the end representing a transfer to the society where we live. Okay.
Then this is the big, broad question that we make altogether to try to understand better. Reach out for the feelings and beliefs in the basement of this technology that we are uses, okay? Then we continue reflecting on that and women understood only 15% to 20% of the people who are developing technology is women. Only 15% to 20% of the people that develop the technology is women.
Then in many of the countries we have a study that production of that technology is concentrated in urban areas, is concentrated in men, and is concentrated in white men. Those are the beliefs and the visions that are in the technology that they are building.
We want, of course, more women creating technology, yes. We want to integrate more women in the IT development process. Yes, we want that. But we have to take care, because at this moment there are big movements trying to integrate women into the IT sector because there is a strong relationship between diversity and innovation. Then big companies are very interested to integrate more women because their teams are going to be more diverse, and then the innovation is going to go up faster, yes.
This is one of the reasons why we have many, many countries and many, many companies different programs to integrate more women.
The second reason is because a scarcity of human resources in the IT sector. There are a lot of programs and policies even trying to integrate more women in the IT sector because there is a big need for human resources in the IT sector.
But we want to go a little bit more in depth about which is the role and what is the role that we want for women to play in the IT development, in the technology development? We would like to create opportunities for women to really propose new ways to create the technology. Not just to integrate in the normal process of creation of the technology, but to develop new spaces for the creation of the technology to take the women's references, the women's vision, the women's beliefs, the women's needs, the women's problems to develop the technology that is moving the world.
And that means a difference, a big difference because it's not the same to be integrated in the processes that are already based in other beliefs than create new IT processes in what women need and believe, okay? Then with 400 women integrated in the network, we say that we want ‑‑ we don't want to be integrated in the same technology integration process.
We want to promote and propose how to build the technology. For what are we going to build technology? What kind of technology we want to build, yes, and where do we want to build the technology. That's why, for instance, we have the focus in the rural areas trying to develop digital economy in the rural areas, creating their own business enterprises in the rural area, and developing the economy based in the digital led by women.
Then we have discussed a lot about the environment context, especially in the universities, and how we are teaching IT in the universities. We checked the roles that we are reproducing in the IT careers inside the universities. Because just to put some examples, the role of men and women inside the IT careers are different since the moment when they are studying IT careers, beginning for the issue that in these careers you have just 10% of women in a very masculine environment.
Then the possibility to create new ideas and technology is very hard because women have to adapt and adopt this masculine environment in their careers to really survive and finish their careers. The second is the role of the teachers, which are different, which is different for women and for men. And all of that created a cycle who is reproducing the man that ‑‑ the boys studying careers in the IT sector and teach it later.
There is a cycle in the reproduction creating very masculine environments. That's why we propose that the only really way to balance the gender and balance the gender in terms of the production of that technology is by creating what we call the ‑‑ I don't know. What we call a lively cycle based in the networking of women. We have to meet it together because we're inside the very masculine environment, and to change that we need to get together and propose together.
Something similar happened inside the private sector, inside the companies. And we have 15% of women in the teens that are discussing it, and we need to discuss with the companies and the IT companies what it really means to have an inequity environment inside the companies to try to create more violence around the ‑‑ between men and women and especially the possibility for women to propose which ‑‑ what kind of technology they want and what kind of technology is needed to move the world, not just base it in one reference.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Kemly. Now we'll pass for the second part of the workshop, which is the participation of you by doing questions and sharing your personal experiences, making comments. I'd like to start by asking if there are any remote questions.
No. So does anyone want to speak? One, two, three, four. Okay. So I'm going to start here. And we can do it like this.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I'm glad that we talk about the working environment and we talk about the programming and infrastructure because this is our experience. We have many women in tech, but there are so tired when they have to push and to fight every day, and they do not have the energy then to come and share the knowledge with other women. Even to teach them, because they're exhausted.
Even if they start to stay in a common space and most of the free and Open Source community, the FOSS alternative, which is very masculine resource oriented and it's tiring for women that first we have to prove and constantly have to prove, and then you can go to the subject. We could even program the code to see if it works, but there's this constant projection.
I see younger gamers when they're out of line, they decided to act as a male or be projected in identity as a male, because if they're the girls, they have to explain why as girls they're better than that. My sons, their friends, the best are the girls. They reveal who they are only in a safe circle. For the others in line they are male because they can't spend half or a quarter of their time playing and explaining why they are so good.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. I'm Oliver Barr. Thank for the strong presentations and I was wondering it and Erika touched on it.
What do you believe and the question on the panel and the audience that technology companies should be doing to improve people's privacy? What kind of controls should they give their users? What kind of options? How should it communicate with the users about how their privacy is being treated at the moment?
Erika, you mentioned the reel‑in policy or using Google alert to search listings. Are there other things to be offered as users of online services to protect our privacy in a better way.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello, everyone. I'm Bernice Kibet. Being one of the engineering students, in spite of the fact that we have a list of initiatives when it comes to increasing the woman workforce in the technology field, there's an issue with maintaining the same women in the same field. It shouldn't be about only coming up with initiatives and encouraging them to get into the field, but it should come with initiatives on maintaining the same women in the field. We should also encourage them to have active participation in the same field.
We shouldn't only be seated there, but our voice should be heard when it comes to the technology field. Managing the workforce. How women needs and technology needs to manage the workforce, especially university students since we're the next generation of women in technology with the STEM courses. We really need to be careful about how to manage the workforce when we get into the work field so we transition well from the sector into the industry.
The other issue the is gender issue. When you talk about gender, are we talking about women only, or we can also ‑‑ I think gender is vast. We can look at gender in terms of the female gender. We can also look it at in terms of the sexuality. What is the line ‑‑ where do we draw the line between gender issues? Is it a woman or is it their different sexual aspects?
I want to get clarification on that because it's an issue whether we talk about gender. Another issue is the issue of mentality. When it comes to women in technology, it begins at a very young age. For instance, when you look at the young kids, when it comes to buying of toys, a girl will have a doll which is a princess and a boy always has a car.
This is where the mentality aspect of technology comes from, and I think it's high time we try and come up with initiatives that encourage them from a very young age to land that ‑‑ at that make their own toys using the different technology devices or to encourage them to have a very strong mind when it comes to technology from a young age. This is what will build the next moment in this time. Thank you so much.
>> AUDIENCE: Okay. So more like a documentary taking over some of the topics that you already shared. So starting with the tools, you talked about tools that we could use to defend ourselves on the web, and I think that is very, very important. Right now there are stacks of tools for journalists to protect themselves on the web, and I am not sure if any of you know that if there is any stack of tools of the sort for women or other minority groups, that would be the perfect place to share it.
If there isn't, though, I propose that this could be a good space to talk about starting one. I'll have you know about get hub, the openness platform. It's a very, very good place to do open collaboration. So if ear going to build a stack of tools, we can basically open and get the repository, and everybody can contribute to it, even whenever we are in our own countries, right?
So this is an open proposal for this table. About work, about the working environment, I want to share with you that, yes, I'm a person in the tech industry, and it is difficult because it's very aggressive towards feminism, right? You go in there and talk about feminists and even with other women, you're not even talking to the men, and they're already like making faces, right? Frowning. Like, oh, you're going to start talking about feminism. I'm not even talking to you, but okay.
I think the very, very important thing is actuals are important and the very important thing is tools at the end are used by people, right? We women need to start associates, right? Men are very, very good associating between themselves. I don't know if it's different in other countries, but here in Mexico they say that the greatest enemy of a woman is another woman.
That is very bad to say, but unfortunately, I think it is sort of true. We don't really associate between ourselves. So the very important thing is we need to start associating between ourselves in a different way. Right now I don't know if you know the tool called Slack. I'm going to show it here. Slack is an open chat, and there is a group of women from all around in the world in a Slack called Openness.
If you give me your e‑mail, I can sign you in. It's a lot of tech women all over the world talking to each other about their experiences and also associating to the specific action, right? So this is very important.
Another initiative I wanted to talk about in this same mentality that we need to start associating but actively and not just in Facebook sharing links, but actively taking a stance in the society we have, right? There has been an initiative that started here in Guadalajara earlier in the month, and it has already taken over Mexico. It's called (speaking in Spanish) and with us in the feminine way. It's a feminist manifest that says you by signing in the manifest are committing to include women in any Congress or any event or any whatever that you are organizing.
So this is very important. I have been an organizer of tech events, and it is very, very difficult to get women. That shouldn't be an excuse. As women, as feminists, as minorities, as whatever, we need to assume the responsibility that if we do not put those places on the table where women and people of other races and people of other sexual orientations are going to view those panels, nobody else will do it for us.
So those types of active associations should be encouraged. One final comment about, again, taking an active stance. I wanted to do a shout‑out to Trevis CI. What they do is you open a tech position and get what ‑‑ what you get is basically men, right?
That's the typical excuse for it the company not to hire other people. What they do is open a position first only to minorities, and that is very interesting, right? They open up a position for two weeks or month just receiving and interviewing minority candidates. If they don't get the candidate, they open the position generally. That's it.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I know we have a few comments on that side, but I want to ask if any of the speakers wants to jump in.
>> Excuse me. Bernice, you talked about inserts women in IT, is that right?
Well, that's the thing. That's a very interesting topic because in my research I seen it consistently. Programs will try to say women in IT do have different success. It does work. Sometimes the program has a greater effect on the short‑term, and after a few years let's say it tapers off. And if you look at some of the countries with the greatest gender equality like Norway and Iceland, which for decades they have been working towards bridging the gender gap, some jobs, some professions still have a gap.
That's the thing. These programs, they do work, yes, but there are ‑‑ I believe there are differences. We have to consistently make the work to include women. We have to do a consistent work to bridge the gender gap, but I don't think it's a victory ‑‑ it's a battle that, okay, we won. It's over. It's never over.
It's a continuous battle, because if the question is if we do observe, if this is truly the effect that not many women want to go to STEM, but we have to make sure that women who do want to go to the STEM can do it. That's the real battle maybe. Maybe it's not actually achieves 50% equality, but achieving 100% that every woman who wants to go to IT has a chance. If we try to compare the gender gap that it's not 50/50, maybe we get something that's not really ‑‑ that does not really explain the reality.
What maybe you should see is what you already mentioned. The maintenance of women in IT and the satisfaction. We're talking about exhaustive it is to be a woman in IT. That you have to constantly prove yourself.
Let me see. Yeah, yeah. Women IT are exhausted because of the constant need of proving yourself. Maybe that's the real battle. Maybe fighting 50/50 equality, maybe it's not the goal we should strive for, but we should strive for 100% satisfaction. This should maybe be the quality we're struggling for.
>> SPEAKER: Following the same idea, I think integrating women in IT is not enough. This is one specific thing. It's not enough integrating women in IT. There is a need for women to create more technologies, to create IT, to create a new narrative that is transformative in technology.
We can develop new technology that doesn't permit the violence for instance for the exclusion because it's new ideas who are there and are trans forks in IT. Then for this this is the point. Always the problems that integrate women in IT, but it's not enough, okay? The second point and it was raised by the girl is about the issue between gender or women, yes.
I think that we believe in gender relationships and gender ‑‑ all the genders, yes, but in the case when we have such an aggressive environment and such a professional culture that we have to change, there is a need for working first between women and they develop the networking and the association of women to propose and change this aggressive environment and culture. That's why we believe at the beginning you have to work between women or ‑‑ when I say women, it's not just women with a skirt, yes.
It's the people who feel and think as women. This is one point. We want women in leadership in technology, and women leadership in technology have to think in the indigenous population inside IT and what is happening with the Caribbean population in IT, they are not included also in the development of that technology in our countries. We have very few black people in informative careers.
We have very few indigenous careers. We need all the other perspectives to create another kind of technology. Just the point to take the mic for me, but it's about how to work with the girls, yes? How to work with the girls.
I think we cannot just with the girls but the communities. We have to reduce the stereotypes in the community level because we cannot cherish the girls, the responsibility to change the stereotypes in their homes. Then it's important and in this case we work a lot to reduce the stereotypes in the relationship of women and technology in the community level. We have a very beautiful program where the girl and her mom go to the informative clubs.
They go together. The mother and the girl, and the one who leading there is one of the representatives. She's in charge of these beautiful initiatives going for the girls with the mother to the informative clubs. Then I have more things.
>> MODERATOR: We have two more comments here from our speakers, and then we can pass for ‑‑
>> AUDIENCE: (Volume too low).
>> SPEAKER: I just want to make points about your question. I think it's important to build an industrial process of privacy to focus it in the fact that children and women that do not always have familiar later with the technology, and then the process to education, the girls, the boys, the youngers to use this tool is extremely important.
And the back doors are highly harmful. Not just to the violence against women but also against the privacy as a value, a legal value and a social value and it's very important that we change this framework to keep them in devices.
>> ERIKA SMITH: They very, very generic. The very first thing that we create a culture where consent is a tick box and forever. Consent is that. It has to be constructed and changed and take it away. These are things around consent and creating a culture of consent, and it can be very micro and massive. That's a huge improvement.
Another example downloading an app with permissions, I understand you can accept some things and not all. The app might still work, but no, it will never work. It must have access to your address book and all the information about your address book. Explain why. It's not evident. We could talk about terms of reference that are in my native language, but I don't know what the hell they say.
We can talk about the way we ‑‑ I think so many tech companies worked hard on these issues. I'm not dismissive of it in the least, and there are things as much as I critique invasion of privacy in the Facebook, I respect what it did to understand the understanding of how our privacy is being invaded.
I think one of the biggest things is privacy and design and not‑for‑profit. That's easy to go, but it's really, really true. If that's our starting points, it's going to be harder, right?
Multiple language access in that sense.
I have lots of other things, but wow, consent would be a really good one. I don't know if anyone else wants to talk really loud as he's walking out the door? Really? No one with advice for tech companies? Truly?
>> SPEAKER: You can come find me.
>> MODERATOR: We're excited. Louise wants to make a point and I want to hear the girl there.
>> LOUISE MARIE HUREL: What we talk about today is being sensitive and knowing what we're doing when, for example, private companies impose terms of service on us and we don't have the slightest idea what happens behind the terms of service and what the privacy policies will do with our data. In between all these privacy issues and privacy aspects that we keep on talking several workshops over here is sometimes we lack the sensitivity and this gender vision, because most of the times we keep on talking about, oh, we have to have consent, and we have to be more transparent.
Are we looking at these privacy issues through gender lenses? If we don't look at it through these lenses, we talk on the same issues. We're going to keep talking the same agenda. If we bring gender into that, we're going to get so much richness, because we're not bringing only women and men or feminine and masculine, but we're bringing different perspective.
The whole debate today here is to generate the sensitivity to bring this vision, and I think part of a coordination that is being proactive in the sense of having actual mobilization and organizing events, but it's also very collaborative effort to create safe spaces and it's part of this composition and it's difficult. I mean, it's really difficult because to have some kind of coordination between in Facebook groups where women share experiences and talk about being abused and create same spaces, and that comes along with other initiatives and try to promote this coordination.
I think sometimes we're lacking on that and more dialogue. Just wanted to raise these points.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. If you could, please. We have a comment over there, and then there.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello. I'm Maarten. For the last four years I have run play over hate. It's about video. It's sexism, homophobia and racism, you will find it all. As the gaming community is known for toxicity since the incidents around gamer gate, but yet, here I'm not sure the answers that I'm hearing are going in the directions where I see much of a future.
Do we need new technologies? I'm not sure. We've tried a lot in games and muting everybody and replacing it through emojis. People always found a way to harass each other. Erika talks about doxxing and that it's a fun game. It was a fun game all through gamer gate, but doxxing also was a huge power imbalance on the Internet. That was the case with most games.
Yes, we need to consider the gender perspective and we need to see what power and balances we want to address. I would like to hear more about those possible power imbalances that we need to address. I'm not sure, for example, what to include now.
Consent, if I want to ask for concept, because what kind of actions are we talking about, and how would technology address it? A lot of the technology is meant to be neutral, and then I would like to know how agenda perspective would change the technology because I know Slack and I know Slack can be used both ways. Get hub was of the biggest downfall for companies. What kind of technology would you expect to change the systems here? Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Serene, and I'm from Malaysia. I have a comment on women. I'm so glad this conversation came up.
I think the way that society understands the analogy, it's also ‑‑ it has been constructed to be a public domain for men. Whether we think about technologies in the tech industry, you think about Steve Jobs. Women have grown up with in our life, radios and washing machines, but it's not recognized as worthy enough.
So there's a need to change the narrative and we have a question for Erika on doxxing. I recently met this person. He told me that he has this habit of randomly searching for women on Facebook. This is how he actually met his wife. When I heard it, it was really creepy.
I'm not sure, you know, where do you draw the line? Doxxing can be fun, but when do you draw the line this is not cool but violence? Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: We have a point here, but first I'd like to know if there's any remote participation?
>> AUDIENCE: I'm also from Brazil. I think we're the majority here. I don't work with technology, and I don't work with politics. What am I doing here, right? I'm an anthropologist so I'm studying everyone. What caught my attention is how words are thrown around in a diverse environment and mean so many different things in different countries, cultural spaces like, for example, sensitivity. What does it mean in a broader sense of the term. It can mean a lot of things, or even consent. How do we think of consent in relations that are so oppressed by inequalities?
We assume children can't consent. Why do we assume certain groups of people can consent to certain things? These words, they always seem to me very universe. Sometimes they give us an answer and don't explain anything. Speaking about the Brazilian legislation, which is what I'm studding ‑‑ studying right now. Brazil is a paradigm.
In 2006 we created a law for domestic violence against women. At the same time we know that this effort was not enough in the feminine numbers of white women, black women raised over 50% if I'm not sure. Penalization and dealing with the police and criminal system, is not enough. On the Internet I find that a lot of professionals don't know what to do with it. How to make evidence out of a print. How to you make a case of something that happened on What's Up.
So it's a bunch of ideas and guides I have that I wanted to share. I'm really happy to find my countrywomen here with me.
>> MODERATOR: We only have like 15 minutes. I just ‑‑ I'm going to ask one more time if we have comments? If one of our speakers wants to, you know, comment on anything else, feel free.
>> GUSTAVO PAVIA: Earlier today I was talking to Bernice about the structures of oppression. If we look at feminists and gender in intersectional theory in the USA, which is a big source for most people, we see that, for example, I've heard the phrase that being black is the ‑‑ you're in the situation of least privileged. Some people say that.
When you apply this framework to other countries, sometimes being black, the very essence of the social experience of being black is different to certain countries. In Brazil, for example, being black is a ‑‑ it's a gradient. In some countries you're ‑‑ yes, in Brazil it's a spectrum. In other countries like the USA it seems you're either black or you're not.
In Brazil it's a spectrum, and it's not only if your skin color but your descent and the region you're in. So the framework for oppression and privilege and social conditions, it has to be adapted to each circumstance. And I think there's an interesting topic that seems that the international forum we have people from so many locations, I find this a really interesting thought. That each country or even each city or state might require particular thinking about how oppression works. If you want to start talking about that and if no one wants to say anything, I'd like to hear your opinion.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Gustavo. Can I say going to the girl who asked about the difference between gender and sexuality. Is she here? So, it depends on what kind of gender you're thinking about, because you can speak about gender through a theoretical point of view, an academic point of view and you can quote Butler and use it as a concept of analysis.
Many people use gender nowadays as just a general word for women. You're right about that. If you think about the origins of the term, it's connected to norms and stereotypes that we have regards what we think or perceive as feminine, female, or see or are perceived a male as masculine. What we see as right is heteronormativity. That means that we expect that people perceived as women are attracted to people perceived as men and vice versa.
So sexuality and gender are typically connected in a theoretical way because they come from the concepts from the same line of thought. What Gustavo said, of course there are many original and specific details when it comes to dealing with violence, and I don't use oppression. I use inequalities, but I work with this study group in Brazil that we have this called the social markers of difference and how they interact with each another.
Nobody is just a woman or just a man or just gay. You're a gay man from Brazil perceived as white from middle class. You are made of so many aspects of your identity, and you can't separate them. And if you try to play in the oppression game to see which one has the biggest oppression card, I'm disabled and blah, blah, blah, then you win.
So what we say is that it's very interesting to think about all of these aspects alone to create a theoretical platform, but we also have to say the reality makes them altogether. Even in one country, one city, one neighborhood there's so many variables you have to think about.
It's interesting that here we see so many differences, but two panels ago a girl from Pakistan and I were discussing the same things. She was talking about Pakistan, and I was talking about a tribe of native Brazilians, for example.
With that in mind, I think if you think that everyone is made up of all these differences connected and differences then have to mean inequality. This is the main point. This is what we believe in. This is why we're here. This is the main model of the U.N., right? The ability to live in a diverse, different environment with equal opportunities and equal rights, right?
So that's ‑‑ we have to have in mind we are made of many differences, and some of them became major inequalities and they make us subjected to violence and even ‑‑ many forms of violence. Sorry. I overspoke.
>> MODERATOR: Erika, do you want to?
>> ERIKA SMITH: There's just no way I can answer those fantastic questions, but I would really love to keep talking about them. I don't think that get up is a fascinating great space. I think there's a lot of work on gaming for social transformation, and not my field. I don't know how successful it's been, especially with particular communities.
Is it something more effective in younger generations? Is it something that is effective for people who are current gamers, et cetera? So it's ‑‑ I would love to talk to you a lot about everything you proposed. I think it's incredible, the work you're doing. I think that there are already some attempts in terms of very specific online digital security solutions for, for example, women who face specific violence and connected to the experiences that you've mentioned.
There are things like crash over right network in the states and another group that was created in the states called heart mob. Those are more experienced for women who live in a certain region or white women from the north. There are other initiatives that are ‑‑ I mean, I think it's really hard.
There are other responses that are going on that are not necessarily an application but that look at how you can use tools to support yourself. We heard early on about the helpline just set up by the digital rights foundation in Pakistan, for example, that is also trying to have an intersectional approach of psychological and legal support and digital security. There's no one size fits all solution.
Certainly we also talk about take back the tech campaign during the 16 days of activism and talk about different options and ways of understanding how violence is happening, but also not trying to do it in a way that helps you enjoy what you're doing in exploring technology and not decide to completely go offline, which is what many people have had to decide.
Also Tactical Tech developed the manual. I'm not sure which is English or Spanish, but it's in both languages. That's available online in Wiki format. So there are some things out there that they're not ‑‑ they're no way as sophisticated as an awesome game. Are they one size fits all solutions?
I don't want to give the impression that doxxing is just a game to people. That there's no understanding of how incredibly harmful it could be. I just wanted to point out that the practice in and of itself is not, because frequently then what it gets to be prohibited is doxxing or what's bad is trolling.
We're interested in what's the harm? My private information is out there online. My private information that I had for other purposes online is now associated with my erotic film. I had a different identity, and then that has that name and where you live and what your profession is. It's also sent to your boss. That's the sort of doxxing that can, of course, be very harmful.
I'm sorry if I was so sarcastic that that was implied, that doxxing is really cool. I think that if we could understand how it happens and explore the technology a lot more and, yes, indeed explore how we ‑‑ what information about ourselves is out there and also explore more about who is doing this to us, we would ‑‑ if we could do that process of documentation, which will not be fun. It would be more laborious, that's all. I just want to address that misconception. Sorry.
>> MODERATOR: We have four minutes, and I have two more comments. So one minute each.
>> AUDIENCE: I just have one minute to say a few years ago, five years ago I took technology as neutral and depending on how you use the technology. It depends on that. More and more as a teacher in computer careers and as a computer engineer, and I am a computer engineer, and I believe technology is not neutral at all. I think we can learn a lot from medical technology, for instance, and how that changed when we integrate women's vision in the development of the medical technology and how these technologies changed completely. I just wanted to say, and it's a long discussion and a very interesting one, and yes, very ‑‑ a lot of things to do on that.
>> AUDIENCE: So just one quick comment on what you said, I couldn't agree we're more we're all bits of pieces in different categories, I think. We mobilize them to try and tackle something specific, but the problem is that the dissociation of these different components of our identities, and especially Flavia and I remember talking about over, you make public policies, how do you mobilize the categories? How do you understand gender when you're, you know, policy‑making processes?
And that's ‑‑ I think that's the real question, because we're all part of many things. I'm a student. I am white. I am from Brazil. I am 23 years old. So there's so many things makes me, but at the same time when I'm under this institutional thing, I am tackled through these categories. So I think not only in policy‑making but also in making code and making technologies, how are we articulating these different things? Okay. So time's up. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: So the time I have left is to say thank you all for coming, and this was very exciting. This is a very exciting discussion. If we can, you know, meet outside and keep debating and stuff, so thank you.
(Session concluded at 16:30 CT)