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This text was contributed to TechCabal by Sefa Ikpa and Zikora Ibeh. Sefa is an advocate working for the inclusion of marginalised teams and voices in governance processes in Nigeria and the safety of civil liberties. She is {an electrical} and electronics engineer with a ardour to boost digital entry and shut the gender hole in STEM schooling. Zikora is a researcher and social analyst with a deep-seated ardour for social justice. She works to make a distinction in society via public coverage advocacy, motion analysis, and conventional and digital media advocacy.
Worldwide Ladies’s Day is well known yearly on March 8 and is a day to commemorate the achievements of ladies and advocates for gender equality. This 12 months’s theme focuses on innovation and digital know-how for gender equality, recognising the rising influences of know-how, and the necessary position it performs in society right now, together with the damaging and constructive results.
During the last twenty years, digital know-how has had important impacts on world industrialisation, data democratisation, entry to energy and alternatives, and networking. Certainly, the expansion of digital know-how has revolutionised human experiences and social interactions the world over.
For a lot of girls, the emergence of social media, a facet of digital know-how, has supplied highly effective platforms for sharing pivotal experiences, studying, and overtly difficult unhealthy gender norms – permitting them to carry daring conversations which can be deemed taboo in offline areas. In growing economies like Nigeria, new media frontiers akin to digital and augmented actuality, Fb and Twitter amongst others, have empowered a budding feminist motion to thrive in recent times with celebrities leveraging their viewers by utilizing digital platforms to problem gender stereotypes and empower communities of ladies with data to thrive in confidence and financial independence.
Nevertheless, the growth of digital areas and transformative positive factors of interactive applied sciences have additionally created new threat patterns and threats for girls and younger women, offering perpetrators of Gender-Based mostly Violence (GBV) with new pathways for abusing victims in largely ungoverned digital areas. Cyberbullying, harassment, and stalking are all too widespread for girls on-line and may have critical and lasting penalties for his or her psychological well being and well-being.
Ladies, particularly those that utilise digital platforms to specific their opinions on sexism and gender equality are sometimes susceptible to a spread of abusive and dangerous behaviour. This consists of receiving threatening feedback and messages, having their private data publicly shared with out their consent (often called doxxing), and being subjected to on-line shaming techniques akin to slut-shaming.
One other rising type of assault is the demonizing of gender equality ideologies akin to feminism, reproductive rights, and equal pay for equal work by misogynists and mischievous people with a view to undermine the legitimacy of those discourses, keep and reinforce dangerous gender stereotypes, deter inquisitive girls who’re simply beginning to have interaction in conversations about gender equality and will not but have a robust sense of their very own beliefs and values.
In patriarchal societies, like Nigeria, the place conventional gender roles are deeply ingrained, it’s not stunning that these attitudes are imported into digital areas, forcing girls to stay subservient, and resort to self-censorship to guard themselves from on-line GBV. In excessive circumstances, victims restrict their publicity to digital platforms or undertake masculine names to keep away from cyberbullying.
To deal with these challenges, and improve the alternatives that digital instruments provide for bridging gender inequality, it’s important to create secure digital areas for girls to flourish. Such areas have to be characterised by freedom of expression, respect for range, safety from hurt, and the attention that people should take accountability for their very own on-line behaviour, refraining from perpetrating or condoning acts that promote violence and the discrimination of ladies.
To this finish, digital platforms and applied sciences have to be designed with mechanisms that precisely recognise and prohibit all types of gender-based violence, irrespective of how delicate. Such platforms should additionally present customers with efficient instruments to report and block abusive content material, simplify the method of looking for assist for victims in addition to observe perpetrators of GBV to face the implications of their actions as legally acceptable.
Furthermore, girls want to concentrate on the dangers they face on-line and be outfitted with the talents to guard themselves. This will embrace educating girls find out how to recognise on-line harassment, find out how to report it, and find out how to shield their private data on-line.
However selling digital equality and entry within the digital area is not only about security; it’s also about empowering girls with the technical abilities and digital literacy they should thrive, understanding that these are crucial constructing blocks in the direction of gender equality.
Ladies’s entry to know-how have to be expanded, and so they have to be concerned in tech design and governance to assist handle the digital gender divide and challenges. This requires important funding in growing girls’s abilities in advanced tech actions and applications, in addition to involving extra girls in tech governance and decision-making.
In conclusion, as we rejoice Ladies’s Day, it’s essential to do not forget that creating secure digital areas just isn’t a luxurious however a necessity. It’s important for selling gender equality, defending girls’s rights, and empowering girls to take their rightful place within the digital world. This requires a whole-society method that recognises the significance of sustaining offline and on-line cultures which can be inclusive, respectful, and secure for everybody, particularly girls. By working collectively, we will create a digital world that’s actually transformative, one which harnesses the facility of know-how to construct a extra equitable and simply world for all.
