IGF 2017 WS #57 A Playbook for Gender Equality: How to Harness the Power of Digital Media & Emerging Tech

Session Format: Round Table - 90 Min

Proposer:
Country: Canada
Stakeholder Group: Government

Co-Proposer:
Country: South Africa
Stakeholder Group: Civil Society

Speaker: Irene Poetranto
Speaker: Dhyta Caturani
Speaker: Jan Moolman
Speaker: Tara Denham

Content of the Session:
"A Playbook for Gender Equality: How to Harness the Power of Emerging Tech for Women's Rights"

This panel discussion will be lead by Tara Denham, Director of the Democracy unit of Canada's Office of Human Rights, Freedoms and Inclusion.

The outcome of the panel discussion will be to draft up a "playbook" which will include a top 10 best practices for practitioners, so as to create greater awareness of how to use emerging technology to further gender equality in the digital world.

The session will build on the findings of the IGF best practice forums on gender from 2015 and 2016.

10 minutes:
What does gender equality look like in the digital environment?
What is the global impact of lack of gender equality and threats to women's rights, such as violence against women (VAW) online?
What are the best practices to improve gender equality in terms of digital media?

20 minutes:
What are the risks to gender equality posed by machine learning, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality?
A fact based account of what the risks are, and what we see happening, and a futurists view of what happens if we do not address these problems

15 minutes:
Examples of good practices for gender equality and reducing and addressing VAW online (both prevention and response) that inspire and inform this discussion?

15 minutes:
Build the playbook
- for developers
- innovation startups working in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality
- for NGOs
- for consumers
- for government

Relevance of the Session:
Shape your Digital Future.

Emerging technologies like machine learning, virtual reality, artificial intelligence have the potential to promote gender equality and to combat VAW. But that is not the trend that we currently see. The time is ripe for a discussion of how emerging technologies affect gender equality, and how they can be used to promote a more inclusive world where women are on a level playing field, and what kind of a "playbook" would help inform civil society, NGOs, activists and governments to make sure women's rights are reflected in the design and governance of this space.

Tag 1: Gender Issues
Tag 2: VAW
Tag 3: machine learning

Interventions:
We will have quarterly discussions in the lead up to the panels to draft responses to the questions and to prepare a sample playbook that we will iterate on at the event.

Tara Denham, drawing on her successful panel moderatton at Rights Con 2017 on combating online hate, will lead the discussion to ensure that the diversity on the panel contributes to well considered and representative Playbook.

The panel has been selected to represent CSA, the Technical Community, and Academic thought leaders - moderated by someone from a government body who is playing the role of convener.

Diversity:
Perspectives represented: technical, government, civil society, policy

Regions: South East Asia, Africa, North America

LGBT and Gender specialists

Onsite Moderator: Tara Denham
Online Moderator: Marketa Geislerova
Rapporteur: Jennifer Jeppsson

Online Participation:
The workshop moderator will have the online participation session in front of her, and will be in close communication with the workshop’s trained online moderator who will ensure that online participants are included in a timely and fair manner.

If possible in addition to this we would like to provide the online attendees with have a separate queue and microphone, which will rotate equally with the mics in the room.


Discussion facilitation:
We will have a formal outline for the discussion and we will rehearse beforehand to address any gaps or contradictions.

We have two speakers who are interested and are waiting for final approval at their place of work:
Camille François, Fellow at Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, Jigsaw
Alex Walden, Counsel at Google, San Francisco

Conducted a Workshop in IGF before?: Yes
Link to Report: http://www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/filedepot_download/4098/373