It is late spring of 2015 and we are sitting in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, talking about a grave violation of women’s human rights: violence against women (VAW). It has been a long time since I have been invited to speak about technology-based VAW to a group which primarily work in the area of women’s rights and VAW, but engages little, if at all, with internet rights. It is a mixture of politicians, police officers, government representatives, advocates, support organisations and academics.
Luckily, issues related to internet rights such as online harassment, anonymity and freedom of expression are not completely alien to them, as is sometimes the case when one speaks about VAW in tech-focused spaces. As I am listening to presentations and debates, I can see that this crowd sees different types of VAW, including online VAW, as part of the same continuum. In other words, as a “manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between men and women and systemic gender-based discrimination”.
Read the full Feminist Talk in GenderIT.org .