Centre for Internet and Society

A Gendered Future of Work

Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi — 2020-07-21T06:29:22Z

This paper aims to contextualise the narrative around digitalisation and automation with reference to women's labour in India. The paper has been authored by Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi, edited by Elonnai Hickok and Rakhi Sehgal. Research assistance has been provided by Divya Kushwaha.

Abstract

Studies around the future of work have predicted technological disruption across industries, leading to a shift in the nature and organisation of work, as well as the substitution of certain kinds of jobs and growth of others. This paper seeks to contextualise this disruption for women workers in India. The paper argues that two aspects of the structuring of the labour market will be pertinent in shaping the future of work: the gendered nature of skilling and skill classification, and occupational segregation along the lines of gender and caste. We will take the case study of the electronics manufacturing sector to flesh out these arguments further. Finally, we bring in a discussion on the platform economy, a key area of discussion under the future of work. We characterise it as both generating employment opportunities, particularly for women, due to the flexible nature of work, and retrenching traditional inequalities built into non-standard employment.

Introduction

The question on the future of work across the global North - and parts of the global South - has recently been raised with regards to technological disruption, as a result of digitisation, and more recently, automation (Leurent et al., 2018). While the former has been successively replacing routine cognitive tasks, the latter, defined as the deployment of cyber-physical systems, will enable the replacement of manual tasks previously being performed using human labour (Leurent et al., 2018). In combination, these are expected to have a twofold effect on: the “structure of employment”, which includes occupational roles and nature of tasks, and “forms of work”, including interpersonal relationships and organization of work (Piasna and Drahokoupil, 2017). Building from historical evidence, the diffusion of digitising or automative technologies can be anticipated to take place differently across economic contexts, with different factors causing varied kinds of technological upgradation across the global North and South. Moreover, occupational analysis projects occupations in the latter to be at a significantly higher risk of being disrupted than the former (WTO, 2017).

However, these concerns are somewhat offset by the barriers to technological adoption that exist in lower income countries such as lower wages, and a relatively higher share of non-routine manual jobs (WTO, 2017). 1 With the global North typically being early and quicker adopters of automation technologies, the differential technology levels in countries have been in fact been utilised to understand global inequality (Foster and Rosenzweig, 2010). Consequently, the labour-cost advantage that economies in the global South enjoy may be eroded, leading to what may be understood as re-shoring/back shoring - a reversal of offshoring (ILO, 2017). This may especially be the case in sectors where there has been a failure to capitalise on the labour-cost advantage by evolving supplier networks to complement assembly activities (such as in manufacturing) (Milington, 2017), or production of high-value services (such as in the services sector).

Extensive work over the past three decades has been conducted on the effects of liberalisation and globalisation on employment for women in the global South. This has explored conditional empowerment and exploitation as women are increasingly employed in factories and offices, with different ways of reproducing and challenging patriarchal relations. However, the effects of reshoring and technological disruption have yet to be explored to any degree of granularity for this population, which arguably will be one of the first to face its effects. This can be seen as a consequence of industries that rely on low cost labour being impacted first by re-shoring, such as textile and apparel and electronics manufacturing (Kucera and Tejani, 2014).

Download the full paper here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ambika-tandon-and-aayush-rathi-december-19-2018-a-gendered-future-of-work

Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) Convening Design

Admin — 2019-03-01T01:08:54Z

Ambika Tandon attended a workshop organized by Association for Progressive Communications for grantees of the Feminist Internet Research Network as a panelist on a session on feminist research methods.. The workshop was held from 27 February to 1 March, in Malaysia. Represented from 8 organizations attended the workshop.

Objectives of the convenining

To inaugurate a network of feminist researcher in the field of digital technology for ongoing collaboration, advice and active solidarity.
To start trust building within the network through shared values and plot how it will work and how it will expand.
To facilitate exchange of learnings and capacity building among the network members and other resource persons, in particular.
To facilitate peer-feedback, collaboration and interdisciplinary discussions on research design, methodologies and research plans of the selected projects and other resource persons.
To get feedback on overall FIRN project research methodology/design.
To explore new and innovative methods, as well as get understand key developments and challenges in more established ways of collecting and analysing data in the four areas of the research initiative.

For more information click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/firn-convening-design

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 1)

ting — 2016-09-21T10:13:59Z

Five years after Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners, and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries about Wikipedia gender gap on both local (India) and global scales.

“Our editing community continues to suffer from a lack of women editors…. only 8.5% of editors are women.”

Probably the most cited statement for Wikipedia gender gap studies, the editor survey conducted by Wikimedia Foundation in April 2011 revealed the alarming imbalance within the online encyclopedia community(s). In the same survey, the percentage of female Wikipedians in India is reported as only 3%. When we have repeatedly emphasized on the development and changes the internet can bring to our societies, how do we ensure that behind our computer screen it is not just another mirror reflecting what has been silenced and forgotten?

What is the Wikipedia gender gap?

There are two main focus on the gender gap within Wikipedia – the editor demographic and the coverage of topics – which are essentially flip sides of a coin. With fewer female contributors, we are losing a more diverse knowledge platform for all. But the issue is far more complex than simply having less information about “friendship bracelets” than “baseball cards.”

Looking at the biography pages on Wikipedia, researchers found that not only is the number of female biographies much lower than males’ (due to historical factors, availability of firsthand sources, and editors’ interest), but the linguistic and topical bias within also presents a male-centered discourse. For example, on women’s biography pages, words related to one’s gender such as “women,” “female,” “lady” will be used more commonly than the counterpart words in men’s pages; and that a women’s biography will have more information about her marriage and family life than her male counterpart’s. Studies also found that female-related articles are more likely to be linked to male-related ones but not the other way around[1]. This demonstrates that the editing preference, styles, and content are closely related to the editors’ genders and how they see the world. In other words, language and knowledge cannot be separated from one’s gender – the Internet may be bodiless but it can never become genderless[2].

Wagner et al.’s paper[3] in early 2016 also confirmed the existence of a “glass ceiling” for female figures to be considered “notable” enough to have a Wikipedia bio page (or for the page not to be deleted). Who gets to decide what is “notable enough” becomes questionable when we understand the gender bias. As a matter of fact, while the difference in male and female biography numbers is narrower for globally known figures, a larger gender gap exists for “local hero(ine)s” because of the notability threshold applied. That is to say, many women and female-related topics are underrepresented (and underappreciated) on Wikipedia.

The danger and why it matters

Low awareness

The Wikipedia gender gap is problematic and deserves more attention than ever not only because gender imbalance should be tackled both online and offline, but also that this imbalance is so prevalent and has been taken for granted by most. Little do people consider, that with every single “click” on one’s google search, we can be provided with an answer from a single-gender narration. This imbalance and its problems are behind the scene – the share of male and female editors are never on the surface without a holistic survey. While gender balance has been pushed in our business, education, and government sectors, the online encyclopedia feeding billions of internet users (and over 300 million in India itself) is still constructed in a male-dominant culture with little questioning from the public.

Legacy and influence

There is the saying that Internet is changing the human default from “forgetting” into “remembering.” Wikipedia can serve as a great tool for digitization of knowledge and the preservation of languages. What is to be recorded now will become parts of (perhaps the most accessible) history in the future, and we cannot afford a history without women’s voices and knowledge. Hence, to include more women editors and women-related content is not simply out of a concern of diversity, it is to ensure that this time we can pass on the legacy in a better and more equitable fashion for the whole population.

The vicious circle

“We’ve to participate in meet ups and workshops, then question (from family members) arises like how many guys are there, is there any girl or not. In one sentence we're discouraged by our surrounding.”

– Female editor from local community

The urgency of this problem is that the lesser women are presented in the communities, the harder a motivation can be established for new female editors to join. Now that we have made this issue visible, the core mission we have is to ensure a change in the system and environment that helps women feel more welcomed and comfortable – even when they are aware that they are the minority.

In the next part of this blog series: Why is there a Gender Gap?

[1] Wagner, Graells-Garrido, Garcia, & Menczer, (2016). Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia. EPJ Data Science. (5)1. Pp 1-24.

Graells-Garrido, Lalmas, & Menczer, (2015). First women second sex: gender bias in Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext & Social Media (pp165).

Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier, (2015). It’s a man’s Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopedia. From the Wikipedia editor community is sensible to gender in Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 454. URL: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/viewFile/10585/10528

[2] Code, L. (2000). Encyclopedia of feminist theories. London: Routledge

[3] Wagner, Graells-Garrido, Garcia, & Menczer, (2016). Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia. EPJ Data Science. (5)1. Pp 1-24.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-1

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 2)

ting — 2016-09-22T07:55:39Z

In the last part of the blog series, we examined the definition and danger of the Wikipedia gender gap. This issue has been puzzling for many – why is there such a wide gap globally?

Why is there a gender gap?

The reasons behind the Wikipedia gender gap are complex and culturally-sensitive. Two main types of barriers are discussed as “inside of Wikipedia (internal)” and “outside of Wikipedia (external).”

Internal	External
Challenges using Wiki mark-up and its interface	Limited access to internet and facilities
(rare in India) Challenges in getting help from community members	Lack of skills
(rare in India) Being discriminated as a newcomer	Lack of confidence
(rare in India) Experience of discriminative behavior/conflicts	Limited time
The fear of becoming “visible” as one of the few female in the community	Preference to more socially interactive online activities (Lack of interest)
	Awareness - not knowing Wikipedia is editable

(From Jadine Lannon (2013), Same Gaps Different Experience)

India v.s. the World

Unfortunately, most studies have been done in English Wikipedia and rarely in other smaller language communities, despite the fact that these barriers can vary a lot in different cultural, political, and economic context. In India, practitioners and researchers have identified a few potential causes of low female participation rate on Wikipedia. Contrary to what was discovered in the English Wikipedia, researchers have found that Indian female Wikipedians are generally more active and willing to participate in both online and offline interactions compared to those in the English Wikipedia community. Reports of gender discrimination cases are also fewer than those in the Western context. A possible explanation to both phenomena is that Indian Wikipedian communities are rather small and close-knitted which encourage more interpersonal networking and prevent anonymous attacks[1].

Awareness

However, recruiting and keeping female Wikipedians in India do have its own barriers to overcome. “Awareness” is discovered as one of the very primary barriers for most to start editing Wikipedia. Many did not know that the online encyclopedia is easily editable, and even more have not heard of (or are unfamiliar with the use of) Wikipedia. Outreach events are important portals for both men and women to discover and join local Wikipedia communities. And this is where weakness can be turned into strength; as most newcomers are brought in through community outreach events or personal connection, it creates a strong bond within the members and a more welcoming culture featuring collectivism rather than individualism.

On the societal level?

Although the binary categorization of inside and outside of Wikipedia is widely used, it can easily lead us to believe that we can draw a clear line in between Wikipedia and the offline world, but neglect the big picture which shapes both sides of the table. Ignoring the fundamental (societal) level of the issue and its linkage to other factors poses the risk of nurturing a symptom-fixing solution instead of a system-questioning culture.

For example, societal factors such as expectation on women’s/girls’ role and priority in her family can prevent them from the access to required facilities, internet, training, and personal leisure time for joining (or continuing editing) Wikipedia. On the psychological experience side, some women reported that they do not feel comfortable when being so “visible” online and in the community[2]; and this has a lot to do with how our online (and offline) society has been constructed and conceptualized as an “unsafe” space for women.

In fact, Wagner et al. (2015)[3] have found that a nation’s Gender Inequality Index (GII) is associated to the country’s editor gender bias on Wikipedia. Although it was a study focusing on Global North samples, the logic behind is most likely applicable in India (which ranked 130 out of 188 countries’ GII in 2014) – as the more unequally women is treated in the society, the less likely that she can reach the pre-requisite to be a Wikipedian, or even be online. For example, in India there is a much lower literacy rate for female than male – 53.7% to 75.3% as reported in the 2011 Census. At the same time, population (above the age of 25) with at least some secondary education is 56.6% for male and only 27% for female in India based on the UN Human Development Report.

All these societal factors and nuances feed into the gaps we see today – in higher academic positions, in industries, and eventually in Wikipedia. It is definitely not easy to address the macro-scale problems, but what we can do is to change it from the community level to influence individuals and the society. Hence, we are not just battling against an online phenomenon created by individuals’ unwillingness to participate, but challenging and redressing the patriarchal power while transforming the traditions of how knowledge flows. After all, bridging the gender gap should not be merely a target of “We will reach X% female participation rate by Y years,” it has much greater potential and responsibility in the long run for our generations and societies.

In the next part of the blog series, we talk about: What has been done? & What’s more to be learned?

[1] From Jadine Lannon (2013), Same Gaps Different Experience and from WCI 2016 presentation:

[2] Jadine, L., (2013). Same Gaps Different Experience

[3] Wagner, Garcia, Jadidi, & Strohmaier, (2015). It’s a man’s Wikipedia? Assessing gender inequality in an online encyclopedia. From the Wikipedia editor community is sensible to gender in Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 454. URL: https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/viewFile/10585/10528

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-2

Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 3.)

ting — 2016-09-22T07:54:47Z

Five years after Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners, and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries in Wikipedia gender gap narrowing on both local (India) and global scales.

This is the third (last) part of the blog series, please see Part 1 and Part 2.

Responding to the Wikipedia gender gap problem, former WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner set a target in 2011 to raise the female editor percentage to 25% by 2015. In an interview in August 2014, Jimmy Wales declared that “we’ve completely failed,” Gardner also noted that the solutions should come from local Wikipedian communities rather than from the Foundation on a macro scale.

Although the target was not met, initiatives and reforms taken places globally and locally in the past five years are not fruitless. And as mentioned in Part 2, we should not define this movement as merely pursuing a goal towards certain percentage or number. As for now dialogue has been created to include the issue into more strategic plans; collectives are established to cumulate and share resources across communities. There has been abundance of learning (and definitely much more to learn) in the issue.

What has been done?

Be it ongoing or spontaneous, international or local, there have been many interventions trying to address the gender gap in Wikipedia.

Intervention events

In July 2015, WikiProject Women in Red (WiR) was launched to “turn "redlinks (non-existing pages) into blue ones (existing pages).” The project encourages editors worldwide to create (or expand) female-related pages (biographies, women’s work, contribution, issues, etc.) that fit the notability criteria of Wikipedia. WiR also picks monthly and annual topics to feature. Currently in September, 2016, edit-a-thons on Women in nursing and women labour activists are happening online. And “Women scientists” edit-a-thon is a year-long featured topic for 2016. Although WiR is still primarily an English-WP project, some communities have expanded and localized it to local initiatives.

Coincidentally, in 2013, Indian Wikipedian communities have carried out one of the biggest and most well-known gender gap intervention – Lilavatis’ Daughters. “Lilavati’s Daughters” is a book of essay collections featuring nearly one hundred women scientists in Indian since the Victorian Era. The 2013 edit-a-thon was hence to create Wikipedia pages for these biographies in different Indian languages. Collaborating with institutions and colleges, the event was greeted with high popularity and success. Similar events were also carried out afterwards, including Indian Women in Science Edit-a-thon which has been held annually since 2014; the last event was held in July, 2016 at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Another significant initiative across the globe and in Indian communities is the annual Wikiwomen’s history month in March along with the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8^th. The initiative started in 2012, edit-a-thons, photo-thons (updating photos onto Wikimedia Commons), and meetups have been held to raise the awareness of the gender gap online, create female-related content available on Wikipedia, and to strengthen the bonding between local Wikiwomen.

Recently, Wikimedia Foundation collaborated with the United Nations to launch the one-day Her Story project Edit-a-thon on August 12^th, 2016 to celebrate International Youth Day globally. Cities in India like Chennai and Delhi also held local edit-a-thons on the day of in response to the event. With the opportunity to work alongside the UN, it is a good sign that the Wikipedia gender gap issue is drawing global attention, not just in the Wikipedian community level, but also in global institution level.

Collaborative

The Wikiwomen’s Collaborative is a global platform for female Wikipedians to share projects, insights, and support. The Collaborative also encourages participants to write blog post on the Wikiwomen’s Blog to spread more words about the gender gap issue and initiatives. A Gender Gap Task Force (GGTF) was founded in 2013 aiming to challenge the patriarchal culture of knowledge and Wikipedia. GGTF tries to fix the encyclopedia’s imbalance power structure by initiating discussion and examination on its policies and editor interaction. It has also been a place to cumulate research studies and resources on the gender gap topic. A (global) gender gap mailing list is also created to spread the news and words with more communities.

Improvement in the Interface

Aside from events and collectives organized by respective communities, the Wikipedia platform itself has also been under constant transition in the last few years, trying to create a friendlier place for women and newcomers.

Since June 2012, the new prototype Visual Editor has become available in more and more language versions of Wikimedia projects – including most Indian languages. Visual Editor enables editor to contribute without learning the Wiki markups, as it creates the “write-as-how-you-will-see-it” feature requiring only basic typing skills. Nevertheless, Visual Editor does have several limitations comparing to the traditional edit source option, including slower speed, unavailable in talk and discussion namespaces, limited template editing options, and so on. While a research in 2013 on Visual Editor’s use in English Wikipedia showed low effectiveness of the new feature in attracting and encouraging new editors, more research should also be done in the non-English (especially Global South) context. Online tutorial resources about editing are also becoming available in Indian communities.

Traditional Wiki markup editing screenshot

Visual Editor screenshot

On the other hand, mobile apps of Wikipedia has been improved in its editing function. Although the apps are still in constant development to make the function smoother and easier for mobile users, it is a great breakthrough for those who do not have personal computers to contribute in small ways (or even in great ways – some have created pages and denied the statement that mobile editing is impractical).

What’s more to be learned?

There is no denying that our Indian language communities have been putting efforts to highlight and address the gender gap issue on Wikipedia. The Wikiconference India 2016 in August also had a panel responding to this topic where panelists from both outreach and research threads proposed localized perspective and strategies to fix the problem.

However, there are still much more to be learned. First of all, we need a more organized feedback loop (a cycle of planning-executing-evaluating-sharing learning) for local interventions to learn from our success and mistakes. Secondly, the issue has to become more “public” in a sense that we are not just promoting within our own circles. Awareness-building through media coverage and institutional collaboration can bring in greater public opinions and volunteers to help the online encyclopedia become a more inclusive place. The third point is a change of mindset: women's feeling and experience should be put forward into the central of our initiatives and interventions.

“We made it clear that we were focusing on the (female) participants and their experience, the content they created online are of course important too, but that’s just the by-product.” -Wikiconference Indian 2016 Gender Gap panel presenter

In other words, as we are engaging more and more women, the focus should not be numbers but the humans. At the same time, we should always encourage women to stand out and speak out. As mentioned in the previous part, gender discrimination cases have not yet been reported in our communities, but we also have to ensure if it does happen both the female editors and the community should have a certain level of awareness (what constitutes harassment/discrimination/sexism; when and how to call out) and a report and support mechanism to the problem.

The road to a real equalized knowledge system is not easy. As many have noticed and pointed out “This is not just a Wikipedia problem!” Indeed, similar gender imbalance exists in our academies, IT industries, free and open-source software (FOSS) workplace, to name a few. Nonetheless, with the flexibility and the strong bond that Indian Wikipedian communities possess, we can be one of the pioneers in positive changes. After all, the knowledge created and action taken today will shape what our tomorrow can be like.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-the-wikipedia-gender-gap-and-what-has-been-done-part-3

Bridging the gap: Tech giants bring the internet to women in rural India

praskrishna — 2016-10-30T07:23:05Z

This Diwali is going to be a cracker of a festival for Nisha Chanderwal, a second year BA student.

The article by KumKum Dasgupta was published in the Hindustan Times on October 28, 2016. Pranesh Prakash and Rohini Lakshané were quoted.

“I bought a bright red kurta with gold-colour zari dupatta from Snapdeal, my first online purchase,” the 19-year-old resident of Alwar’s Umren village told HT recently.

“No courier service reaches my village. So I gave my aunt’s home address in Alwar. They paid in cash…I paid her when I picked up the parcel,” she added, explaining the circuitous delivery and payment process that is common in rural India.

Nisha is elated for one more reason: She has finally got even with her 20-year-old brother, Ashok. “He has a smartphone, but doesn’t even let me touch it, saying girls should not use the Internet. But now thanks to Google’s Internet Saathi Programme (ISP), I don’t need his phone or his help,” said an elated Nisha.

In July 2015, technology giant Google launched ISP in partnership with Tata Trusts, one of the country’s oldest philanthropic organisations, to bring rural women online in India. Today, the initiative is live in 25,000 villages across 10 states with 1,900 saathis. The final mission is to reach 300,000 villages. Google is adding up to 500 additional ‘saathis’ per week. More than 100,000 women have been trained so far.

Google started this programme because Internet usage by women in rural areas is low.

“Only one in 10 Internet users in rural India is a woman,” Sapna Chadha, marketing head, Google India, told HT. “With ISP, we are creating an enabling environment that empowers them while also bridging the technology gender divide. We believe that easy access to information can transform lives. Our mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible”.

Along with access to information, getting more and more women online has other benefits: “If women are a minority online, they become vulnerable to harassment and violence. Women can’t only be consumers of the Internet but must contribute their views, and make the space equitable,” said Rohini Lakshané of the Bangalore-based The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), which is funded by the Kusuma Trust.

Google and Tata Trusts are leveraging their core strengths for ISP. While Google provides the hardware (phones and tablets), training and Internet connectivity. Tata Trusts does the identification of saathis and the monitoring.

“We tie up with government departments to roll out the project. For example, in Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, we are working with the rural livelihood mission. The government helps us to identify villages, set selection criteria and logistics such as venues,” explained Prabhat Pani, project director, Tata Trusts.

The programme first chooses a few women and trains them on how to use a mobile phone, shoot photos and videos and the basics of Internet. Then the women are sent out on bicycles with a smartphone and a tablet to teach others in their villages.

The programme has opened a new world for many. “Google is like a book. You can get whatever information you need. I am illiterate but I use voice search for information,” said Phoolwati, a 45-year-old resident of Nangli Jamawat, Umren.

Her friend Manju is now the village’s undisputed ‘selfie queen’. “I love taking videos and photos,” she said, adding that she also searches for information on MGNREGA or education loans for her children.

According to Google, the new online entrants are searching for news, recipes, designs for clothes, images and information on pilgrimages, farming and cattle-related information and government schemes.

For Google, it makes immense sense to get more people online. “The company is targeting huge and untapped demographics who are entry-level users. Going forward, they will have a huge first-mover advantage if there is scope to monetise Google’s services,” explained Lakshané.

By 2020, about 315 million rural Indians will be connected to the Internet, compared to around 120 million now. That’s about 36% of the country’s online population. By 2020, this share of rural India will jump to 48%, creating a huge opportunity for brands and marketers in places where establishing stores is a challenge,” says a study by the Boston Consulting Group, The Rising Connected Consumer in Rural India.

The first signs of this market potential were evident during the pre-Diwali online festival season sale. E-tailers posted growth in sales compared to last year thanks to growing smartphone penetration in small towns and villages, cheaper data tariffs and free hotspots. While Google did not divulge the exact revenues that it is spending on ISP, Chadha said it has helped the company to understand the needs of users in rural areas and what role the Internet can play.

Along with ISP, Google is also working with the Indian government on two projects that aims to give more people access to the Internet.

First, the Project Loon, which uses high-altitude balloons to create an aerial wireless network with up to 4G speeds for providing Internet access to rural and remote areas.

Second, the company is partnering with RailTel to provide free wi-fi access in stations.

“The ISP has no immediate profits for Google. The average revenue Indian per user is less than say a user in US. But getting more people online helps Google because its search engine is most used,” Pranesh Prakash, policy director, CIS, told HT. “In the long run, the company will earn when people access its services and also from advertising revenue.”

Nevertheless, the ISP is addressing a major problem. “Many are afraid to go online because they don’t know how they can benefit. While the Saathi programme is not a philanthropic effort, it’s good that Google is addressing this issue through its training programmes,” Prakash said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-october-28-2016-kumkum-dasgupta-bridging-the-gap

Indian WikiWomen celebrate Women’s History Month

Netha Hussain — 2013-04-29T09:21:45Z

March 2013 was a busy month for women Wikimedians in India, as we conducted various events, such as edit-a-thons and workshops to celebrate the presence of women in Wikimedia projects. The women Wikimedians, members of the Wikimedia India Chapter and the Access to Knowledge Team, brainstormed about the possible events, which we wanted to conduct to encourage women to participate and to increase the quality of articles related to Indian women in Wikipedias in English and the Indian languages.

This is a guest post by Netha Hussain, a Wikipedia contributor from India who regularly contributes to Malayalam Wikipedia, among other projects. The blog post was originally published on the Wikimedia Foundation page.

We decided to conduct the workshops and meetups in various Indian cities, in addition to online edit-a-thons. We created a co-ordination page on English Wikipedia and added suggestions for articles to edit. We invited participants to join the edit-a-thon by spreading the word on mailing lists, social media networks and blogs. The Times of India published a feature about the event, which attracted many newbies to participate in it. We also created separate pages for offline events taking place in parallel, and we added a summary of the events to the main page. The participants of the edit-a-thon signed up on the co-ordination page, where we also added the details and status of Women’s History Month events happening in various Indian language Wikipedias.

The inaugural event took place on International Women’s Day (March 8) at Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa. Out of 100 participants who attended the event, 90 were female. Veteran Wikimedians Rohini and Nitika conducted a basic Wikipedia editing workshop. The event also set off the two-day long online edit-a-thon in which fourteen editors participated. Among those who participated in the program were homemakers, students and professionals. Rohini took charge as the Chairperson of the special interest group (SIG) for Gendergap at the Wikimedia Chapter India on the day of the workshop (March 8). She plans to conduct more workshops for women in the future.

Organizers subsequently held a series of events at two venues in Bengaluru and one in Ernakulam. Experienced Wikimedians Pavithra and Nikita Belavate led the workshops in Bengaluru. The workshop also served as an occasion for editors living in and around Bengaluru to meet. The Ernakulam event was aimed at increasing the participation of women in Malayalam Wikipedia and was led by Wikimedian Ditty Mathew. Around 40 women participated in the three edit-a-thons. A Wikipedia Academy with 9 participants was conducted in Hyderabad. Led by Anupama Srinivas, the last of all events took place on 30 March, 2012, in Chennai.

Nikita, who led the Bangalore event, said she was filled with happiness watching the exuberance in the eyes of women participants who edited and saved their edits live on Wikipedia. “This year’s Women’s History month makes me once again believe in the power of women and honing it by empowering them, Wikiwomenising them,” said Nikita.


Participants of the Bangalore workshop organized by FSMK

Vishnu Vardhan, the Program Director of the Access to Knowledge team, was with the WikiWomen throughout the editathon, connecting people, planning events and urging them to contribute. He encouraged his mother, wife and female cousins to contribute to Wikipedia.

“I wish more of us took the initiative of involving the women in our life to share their knowledge on Wikipedia and truly make the Wikipedias the sum of all human knowledge,” he said. Harriet, one of the key organizers of the women’s day events, believes that the Indian Wikimedia community has gained momentum in favor of bridging the gender gap because of this event. She urged the Indian community to follow this success and to increase the participation of women in the Wikimedia movement. Though she could not attend the events in person, she ensured her participation in the edit-a-thon by arranging the logistics, monitoring the coordination page and suggesting changes.

The events had good participation from men as well. Among the 14 participants who signed up on English Wikipedia, 5 were men. In Malayalam Wikipedia, 18 out of the 26 participants who signed up for the online edit-a-thon were men. Dileep Unnikrishan, a male participant of the edit-a-thon, and a fan of Wikipedia, participated in the Ernakulam event because he was curious to find out how Wikipedia works. With women participants, he edited three articles and found it exciting to “be a part of the movement that has brought about a knowledge revolution in the world. The best thing I noticed about Wiki is that it has a peer-to-peer way of organization, which makes it warm and welcoming to newbies like me,” said Dileep.

The Indian WikiWomen are planning to conduct similar events in the future to increase the participation of women in Wikipedia and its sister projects. We are hopeful we will bridge the gender gap in the Indian Wikimedia community by conducting outreach programs, increasing awareness about free knowledge programs among women and conducting action-oriented events targeting women.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/indian-wiki-women-history-month

Project on Gender, Health Communications and Online Activism with City University

ambika — 2019-12-02T09:38:21Z

CIS is a partner on the project 'Gender, Health Communications and Online Activism in the Digital Age'. The project is lead by Dr. Carolina Matos, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Media in the Department of Sociology at City University.

It is funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund. Ambika Tandon, Policy Officer at CIS, conducted fieldwork for the project in May and June 2019 as a research assistant.

The goal of the project is to advance research on how new communication technologies (ICTs) can be used to create awareness of gender equality and sexual and reproductive rights. It aims to assess how the use of technologies, by women's groups and feminist NGOs can empower women in developing countries to advance citizen and human rights with the intent to influence policy at the global and local level. More information on the preliminary findings of the project can be found in the downloadable presentation."

You may find Dr. Carolina Matos's presentation here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/project-on-gender-health-communications-and-online-activism-with-city-university

Stakeholder Consultation on Digital Assets for Women’s Economic Empowerment | UN Women + SEWA

Admin — 2020-04-07T13:14:40Z

On December 06, 2019, Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi participated in a "Stakeholder Consultation on Digital Assets for Women’s Economic Empowerment: Addressing Barriers and Enhancing Opportunities for Women in Informal Economy and in Agriculture".

Aayush and Ambika participated upon the invite of UN Women and Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA), who were the organisers of the consultation. The consultation was from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm on 6th December, 2019 at the Claridges Hotel, New Delhi.

Former UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki Moon established the UN High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment (UNHLP-WEE) to make action oriented recommendations on how to improve economic outcomes for women in the context of the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030.The panel submitted its final report to the UN Secretary General in 2017, identifying seven drivers for women’s economic empowerment and laying out concrete actions for accelerating progress towards women’s full and equal economic participation.

In February 2019, SEWA Bharat and UN Women had organized a National consultation on “Taking Action Towards Transformative Change for Women in the Informal Sector in India” in India with civil society organizations, researchers, philanthropists and international organizations to prioritize action on the drivers for women’s economic empowerment in the context of India. Four drivers, amongst seven, were prioritized through the consultative process. Driver 4 on Building Assets – Digital, Financial and Property is one of the critical drivers for Women’s Economic Empowerment in India and has been prioritized for the first stakeholder consultation in the roadmap development process to contextualize the recommendation of HLP in the Indian context.

The primary objectives, then, of this consultation were as follows:

To provide a platform for sharing of experiences in research, programming and policy to ensure digital assets for women in the informal economy and in agriculture;
To identify proven and promising practices in this regard;
To develop an action agenda including identification of areas for research, programming and policy to reduce the gender digital divide.

*Detailed agenda*

Download the detailed agenda here.

*Participation*

At the consultation, Aayush contributed to the breakout group on DBT while Ambika contributed to the one on employment. The consultation led to rich discussions as on-ground experiences and learning from implementation programs were shared widely to devise a roadmap and policy recommendations.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/stakeholder-consultation-on-digital-assets-for-women2019s-economic-empowerment-un-women-sewa

Comments to the United Nations Human Rights Commission Report on Gender and Privacy

Aayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon and Pallavi Bedi — 2019-12-30T17:40:20Z

This submission to UNHRC presents a response by researchers at the CIS to ‘gender issues arising in the digital era and their impacts on women, men and individuals of diverse sexual orientations gender identities, gender expressions and sex characteristics’. It was prepared by Aayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon, and Pallavi Bedi in response to a report of consultation by a thematic taskforce established by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy on ‘Privacy and Personality’ (hereafter, HRC Gender Report).

HRC Gender Report - Consultation version: Read (PDF)

Submitted comments: Read (PDF)

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), India, is an 11-year old non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. Through its diverse initiatives, CIS explores, intervenes in, and advances contemporary discourse and regulatory practices around internet, technology, and society in India,and elsewhere. Current focus areas include cybersecurity, privacy, freedom of speech, labour and artificial intelligence. CIS has been taking efforts to mainstream gender across its programmes, as well as develop specifically gender-focused research using a feminist approach.

CIS appreciates the efforts of Dr. Elizabeth Coombs, Chair, Thematic Action Stream Taskforce on “A better understanding of privacy”, and those of Professor Joseph Cannataci, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy. We are also grateful for the opportunity to put forth our views and comment on the HRC Gender Report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-to-the-unhrc-report-on-gender-and-privacy

Announcing Selected Researchers: Welfare, Gender, and Surveillance

sumandro — 2020-02-13T15:04:24Z

We published a Call for Researchers on January 10, 2020, to invite applications from researchers interested in writing a narrative essay that interrogates the modes of surveillance that people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations are put under as they seek sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in India. We received 29 applications from over 10 locations in India in response to the call, and are truly overwhelmed by and grateful for this interest and support. We eventually selected applications by 3 researchers that we felt aligned best with the specific objectives of the project. Please find below brief profile notes of the selected researchers.

Call for Researchers: URL

Kaushal Bodwal

Kaushal is persuing his MPhil in Sociology at Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. He completed his Master's in Sociology at Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University after getting a BSc honors degree in Biomedical Sciences from Delhi University. He is one of the founding members of Hasratein: a queer collective, New Delhi. He has been an active spokesperson for Queer and Trans Rights in India and have been on a number of panel discussion on Trans Act 2019 in various campuses. He has also delivered a lecture series on Colonialism and Medicine in Ambedkar University, Kashmiri Gate, Delhi. His areas of interest are Sociology of medicine, gender and medicine, sexuality, religion and biomedical science, intersex studies.

Queerness as disease – a continuing narrative in 21st century India, Kafila, 27 August 2019

What it means to be queer under a regime bent on remaking India on its own ideological terms, Firstpost, 17 January 2020

Rosamma Thomas

Rosamma has worked both as a reporter and as an editor of news reports with newspapers. She currently writes reports for NGOs while also undertaking freelance reporting assignments. She is based in Pune.

India's mining state steps up fight to rein in killer silicosis, The Times of India, 29 June 2016

Doctor may have found early marker for silicosis, but who will fund him?, Newsclick, 18 July 2019

Asbestos poisoning: Raghunath Manwar’s fight for safer work conditions, Newsclick, 9 January 2020

Shreya Ila Anasuya

Shreya is a writer, editor, journalist and performance artist currently based in Calcutta. Her fiction explores the places where myth, memory, history and the performing arts meet. As a journalist, her work explores gender, sexuality, politics, culture and history. She has been published in The Wire, Caravan, Scroll, Mint Lounge, Deep Dives, GenderIT, Helter Skelter, and many more. She is the editor of the digital publication Skin Stories, housed at the non-profit Point of View. She is the writer and narrator of ‘Gul - a story in text, song and dance’ which has been performed in several cities in India. She was a Felix Scholar at SOAS, University of London, from where she has an MA in Anthropology. For a full portfolio, please click here or visit her website.

This project is led by Ambika Tandon, Aayush Rathi, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay at the Centre for Internet and Society, and is supported by a grant from Privacy International.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/announcing-selected-researchers-welfare-gender-and-surveillance

Lecture at International Summer School, Delhi

Admin — 2019-07-22T01:11:00Z

Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi, on July 12, 2019, delivered a lecture at the International Summer School, Delhi.

The ISS is in its 6th year now, and is convened annually as a six week academic program. The ISS is held in affiliation with the Department of Political Science at Jamia Millia Islamia - A Central University (JMI) and with regular support from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) over the years.

The lecture formed a part of the Innovation, Technology and the Future of Work course module at this year's edition. The speakers focused specifically on placing an intersectional lens to drive home the point that there will be not one future of work, but multiple. And how it is that we can begin to interrogate the various competing narratives that are being propagated. Ambika and Aayush also focused on how the present gendered ordering of the labour market stands to be reproduced in the various shapes work will take going forward.

The presentation can be accessed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/lecture-at-international-summer-school-delhi

Girls' schools, women's PGs: The shocking results when you Google 'bitches near me'

Admin — 2018-11-28T01:34:50Z

Considering the monopoly and clout that Google enjoys, it must be held accountable for promoting such stereotypes and values, experts say.

The blog post by Geetika Mantri was published in News Minute on November 26, 2018. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

If there’s a question you don’t know the answer to, more often than not, you’ll turn to Google. The search engine’s monopoly over the market, and data pool at hand, are almost unparalleled in public perception – which makes it all the more alarming when it tends to feed into dangerous and misogynistic values.

This is what seems to have happened, as pointed out by Twitter user @AHappyChipmunk, when someone opened Google Maps and typed “bitches near me.” The results show up addresses of girls’ schools, women’s and girls’ hostels and PGs, and women’s clothing shops. Not only is this shocking because ‘bitches’ is often used as a derogatory phrase for women, but also these Google search results of schools put minors at risk.

The tweet caused much outrage and alarm among people, who did the search themselves and posted screenshots of the real time results that they got.

Why would Google show these results?

Pranesh Prakash, a fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, points out that this was telling of the fact that Google knows that ‘bitches’ can be a slang for women. “For many years now, Google has been trying to understand and search for what you meant, than what you may have typed,” he explains. “However, if you enclose this search phrase in quotes, you will not get the same results, because then it will look for the phrase.”

He also notes that if you were to look for “girls near me”, you would get similar search results on Google Maps, though more specific to women’s accommodations.

In contrast, it you were to Google, “bitch near me”, you would not get Google Map results. “I think that’s because Google understands that ‘bitches’ is more likely to mean women, than singular ‘bitch’,” Pranesh says.

Tech giants need to be held accountable

While Pranesh thinks that the search results are not ‘dangerous’ per se in the sense that a potential abuser was more likely to Google ‘girls schools’ than ‘bitches near me’, he agrees that these search results are telling of the misogynistic language in use online.

However, is it okay for tech giants to wash the responsibility off their hands because this is the language that their algorithm picked up? Nayantara R, who works with the Internet Democracy Project in Bengaluru, says, “This reminds me of the book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism." The book challenges the idea that platforms like Google are level playing fields for different ideas and ideologies. Author Safiya Umoja Noble argues that due to data discrimination, private interests in promoting certain sites, as well as the monopoly of a few online search engines, results in biased search algorithms which discriminate against women of colour while painting favourable portraits of whiteness.

One such bias came to light in July last year where many people, including Congress MP Shashi Tharoor pointed out how a Google search for ‘south Indian masala’ led to a pictures of skimpily clad women, while ‘north Indian masala’ led to photos of spices and dishes. At the time, Google had maintained that this wasn’t its fault and that Google’s search worked by learning from the keywords people use and the results they click on to predict just what people are searching for.

However, Nayantara asserts that considering the monopoly and clout that Google enjoys, it must be held accountable for promoting such stereotypes and values. “The Google page ranking is one of the most protected patents. No one knows how or why certain pages come before the others. In this case, certain search results coming first does not mean that Google is misogynistic. But the algorithmic decision that is taken by someone at Google to rank certain pages which promote certain values before others does have a social impact. All technology is a result of how it is used. Accountability is required there,” she argues.

A conversation about what search results mean

Nayantara also points out that apart from accountability, there needs to be a conversation about what these search results mean. “Search results do embed political values. However, people need to understand that if they Google something and some pages are ranked before the others, it is not reflective of the truth or right or wrong, but reflection of an opinion,” she says.

“We need popular perception to wrap its head around what a search engine is, and that there are alternatives to Google. We also need more algorithmic diversity in search results,” she adds.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/girls-schools-womens-pgs-the-shocking-results-when-you-google-bitches-near-me

Women on Covid lists get lewd calls and messages

praskrishna — 2021-05-24T06:35:20Z

Perverts are eating into precious time in the middle of a pandemic and adding to the overall anxiety.

Women are getting lewd calls and messages when they share their phone numbers to seek and offer pandemic-related help.

On April 15, Shasvathi Siva tweeted about how her number, shared on blood donation and social media groups, received obscene photos and video calls from strangers.

When she spoke about the harassment on Instagram, she ended up receiving more abuse from men.

With the second wave of the pandemic raging, many patients and families are turning to social media to search for medicines, oxygen, and even hospital beds.

Ambika Tandon, senior researcher, Centre for Internet and Society, says, “There are many stories of how prominent and outspoken women like journalists and activists have received hate speech and messages threatening violence.” What is shocking, she says, is not the harassment, but that it is not stopping even during a medical emergency.

Click to read the complete coverage in Deccan Herald on May 21, 2022.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/deccan-herald-may-21-2021-krupa-joseph-women-on-covid-lists-get-lewd-calls-and-messages

A Selection of Tweets on How to Make Crowdmaps Effectual for Mapping Violence against Women

rohini — 2015-03-12T00:42:08Z

This is a collection of tweets by Rohini Lakshane on making crowdmaps more effective for mapping gender violence. The compilation of tweets has been republished by GenderIT.org.

For more see the original published on the website of Gender IT.org on February 19, 2015.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/gender-it-february-19-2015-selection-tweets-how-make-crowdmaps-effectual-mapping-violence-against-women