GF 2018 WS #436 Gender Issues and Democratic Participation: reclaiming ICTs for a Humane World
Workshop Report
Session Type : Workshop
Title: GF 2018 WS #436 Gender Issues and Democratic Participation: reclaiming ICTs for a Humane World
Date & Time: Monday, 12 November, 2018 - 10:40 to 12:10
Organizer(s): Media Matters for Democracy, Association for Progressive Communications, #JamaisSansElles
Chair/Moderator: Sheetal Kumar, Sylvain Attal
Rapporteur/Notetaker: Katja Tochtermann, Tatiana F.-Salomon & Natacha Quester-Séméon, #JamaisSansElles
List of speakers and their institutional affiliations (Indicate male/female/ transgender male/ transgender female/gender variant/prefer not to answer):
Speaker 1: Asad Baig, Media Matters for Democracy, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group, Male.
Speaker 2: Bishakha Datta, Point of View, Civil Society, Asia Pacific Group, Female.
Speaker 3: Noha Ashraf, Dell, Technical Community, Female.
Speaker 4: Isabelle Galy, Deputy Director of Operations at the Learning Lab “Human Change”, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG), Female.
Speaker 4: Sophie Viger, General Manager of 42 in Paris and Silicon Valley, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG), Female.
Speaker 5: Sacha Quester-Séméon, Entrepreneur and Founding Member of the Movement #JamaisSansElles, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG), Male.
Speaker 6: Ankhi Das, Public Policy Director Facebook India, Private Sector, Asia-Pacific Group, Female
Theme: Human Rights, Gender & Youth
Subtheme: DEMOCRACY
Key messages
- What are the practical challenges to inclusion, diversity, equality and political participation in the digital realm and their impact and what are the main regulatory and technical challenges towards political participation by all communities?
- How can states, corporations, international and intergovernmental organizations drive efforts for a wider digital inclusion of girls and women in ways to have a better participation in the conception of policies, technologies? How can educational systems attract women in STEAM fields and teach how to code to have more women involved in sciences and in the conception of new technologies and digital tools and help in solving relevant issues such as biases in artificial intelligence algorithms?
- Do regressive regulatory practices and commercially driven tech design have a disproportionate impact on inclusion of and participation by women and politically marginalized groups and communities? And how can we remove the obstacles so that women become more involved in the development of the Internet and can more fully participate in it?
Please elaborate on the discussion held, specifically on areas of agreement and divergence.
To achieve digital inclusion and gender diversity on the Internet, participants agree that women face similar challenges across the world, online safety being a basic need in the first place. The cyberspace needs to become more welcoming and safe—a safer Internet meaning automatically a more inclusive Internet. Political participation of women in particular is prevented by hate speech and online harassment.
Panelists discuss whose responsibility it is to prevent online harassment and backlash: Some participants point out the role of civil society to flag incidents, some others the responsibility of corporate platforms to protect women. As examples in the Asian areas show, they could implement digital literacy and safety trainings and make content available in local languages.
Improving women’s online presence and participation starts with their equal access to day to day use of Internet and extends to their equal representation on corporate boards of international tech companies. Some participants point out that it is not only a question of technical access, it is a question of uncontrolled and qualitative access (i.e. shared mobile phones in low income families). Furthermore, women must be given a feeling of belonging to this public online space, to fully participate and not only be bystanders, and be able to use Internet as a tool of empowerment to achieve better lives.
Participants agreed to the fact that to improve their visibility, women need to become content creators; they have to market and take credit for themselves. Platforms like Wikipedia and Facebook should give more room for female voices and achievements.
Online content on extraordinary women and role models are needed to get inspired (i.e. the last Nobel Prize Winner not having a Wikipedia page before the award).
Several initiatives across the world show the importance of leaders and decision makers that actually take action against discrimination of women. The French movement #JamaisSansElles shows the efficiency of men committing themselves to gender diversity at a political or corporate level. Many prominent stakeholders in the digital world and beyond have adopted the #JamaisSansElles pledge “not to participate in any public events where there are no women present among the many participants.”
But the issue of visibility is only the tip of the iceberg: as #JamaisSansElles underlines, one has to focus on women’s access to key leading and decision-making positions in all types of environments and their equal recognition and participation in all sectors of society. Therefore, the movement created also a corporate charter. Microsoft France was the first signatory of the pledge, covering events inside and outside the company, thus confirming its commitment to a more inclusive and diverse digital technology industry.
In fine, when corporations commit themselves to gender diversity, this implies better hiring processes and better career promotions for women, leading to improve globally the participation of women and remove the barriers that still limit the influence of women in many sectors of society and deprive them of the major opportunities provided by digital technologies.
More globally, to create a more humane and inclusive world, participants acknowledge that there is a need for a change of mindset. This is a humanistic issue. We're talking about how to live and work together, men and women in a common space. In order to keep its promises, the digital revolution must also be liberating and emancipatory. It must be humanist, and there can be no humanism without gender diversity.
It is also about stressing values other than those common to a 100 % men's world: that is, where there is not only competition, but also collaboration, well-being, and creativity. There should be mentorship for young boys to learn to be more respectful with girls.
Special attention is drawn to gender biases in artificial intelligence algorithms, pointing out the risk of technologies built only by and for men. Automation is powerful and dangerous when it is not inclusive: In a non-inclusive world, discrimination is the rule and we will miss out on part of the collective intelligence. We have to put ethics in algorithms and in artificial intelligence.
#JamaisSansElles has been actively participating in the Women 20 process and was Head of Delegation for France at the W20 Summit October 2018 in Buenos Aires. In the 15 recommendations of the official Communiqué of the W20 Summit, three focus on digital inclusion and one concerns specifically gender biases in algorithms and IA.
The whole W20 preparation process showed that “multistakeholderism” is absolutely crucial when it comes to addressing issues like the inclusion of Women and Digital inclusion, in the sense that actions and commitments can indeed emerge from civil society and economical players, and generate experience that can then be shared, transplanted or adapted elsewhere (see also the IGF 2018 Open Forum here : https://www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/content/igf-2018-of-22-envisaging-the-pillars-of-discussions-for-g20-in-2019
Please describe any policy recommendations or suggestions regarding the way forward/potential next steps.
Education is of course a key issue: To create a more inclusive digital world, the education system, especially in the STEAM domains, should also become more inclusive (meaning also textbooks without gender-biases).
Welcoming young girls in STEAM and Tech programmes should be a priority. To better accommodate girls and young women, one must ensure a benevolent welcome. Young girls will not like all-male environments. But in some tech and coding schools, there are 80-90% men. So, welcoming girls means reserving them a dedicated place, so that they are more willing to come: which might include quotas in some cases.
Schools that enable low-income girls and minorities to access education in the field of new technologies, coding and engineering should be encouraged. This might include innovative methods like peer-to-peer learning, self-education, and collaboration on software challenges, such as the software engineering school “42” experiences demonstrate in Paris and in Silicon Valley.
During their studies, young women in the tech field could be involved in hands-on type initiatives, like hackathons, and supported by mentorship in universities and corporations; to avoid the loss of qualified professionals at the beginning of their careers, when young women might prioritize family obligations.
What ideas surfaced in the discussion with respect to how the IGF ecosystem might make progress on this issue?
The private sector, especially social media platforms, should take responsibility and implement “Human Impact Assessments” to measure how hate speech affects women.
Dedicated organisations could be created to defend women online and provide a safer online environment.
The program of “La Grande École du Numérique” in France has shown good results, thanks to its flexibility and ability to target left-aside students who sometimes do not fit into or succeed in school, but who do react very positively to innovative pedagogies. These programs could be established locally, in underprivileged environments.
Laws should define what is online harassment. The legal sector must address the difference between freedom of speech and sexism or hate speech targeting women.
The whole ecosystem should work on the elimination of various biases, gender biases in particular, which persist in different sectors of society; as well as within algorithms, especially those derived from artificial intelligence, whose impact on our lives and citizenry is increasing.
The IGF ecosystem must commit to gender diversity. At Unesco, on the occasion of the IGF 2018, #JamaisSansElles launched a pledge for Internet governance stakeholders for the equal recognition and participation of women in the digital world. ISOC-France, Reporters Sans Frontières and Renaissance Numérique are the first signatories.
http://www.jamaissanselles.fr/en/internet-gouvernance/
Nombre de participants: 60
Women: 43
Men: 17
To what extent did the session discuss gender issues, and if to any extent, what was the discussion?
Gender issues were the main topic during the session. Each speaker talked about his/her experience on the subject according to his/her own country, culture, professional activity, etc. The panelists discussed specific problems faced in the digital realm and shared initiatives from all over the world to promote digital inclusion and gender diversity.
Session outputs and other relevant links (URLs):
Pledge #JamaisSansElles (“Never Without Her”):
http://www.jamaissanselles.fr/en/call-neverwithouther/
Pledge #JamaisSansElles for Internet Governance Stakeholders:
http://www.jamaissanselles.fr/en/internet-gouvernance/