ICTs cannot create gender equality, or end poverty, but that they can be tools for social action and positive social change. APC WNSP's understanding of gender and technology is built around feminist perspectives on women and ICTs. These include debates that uncover and recover women's history in technology as well as exploring and understanding current experiences of access, use and control of new technologies.

Gender and Internet Rights

APC's approach to 'Gender and ICT' work involves understanding power relations in society. This awareness includes an understanding of the unequal power relations between women and men, north and south, rich and poor, urban and rural, connected and unconnected ­ in local communities, in sovereign countries, and globally. We further believe that the achievement of gender justice is not going to be possible while other forms of social injustice continue.

Our work in this area is led by the APC's Women's Networking Support Programme and focuses on transforming these relations of inequality, with the full knowledge that ICTs can be used to either exacerbate or transform unequal power relations. Part of this recognition includes an awareness of the limits of ICTs ­ that in and of themselves - ICTs cannot create gender equality, or end poverty, but that they can be tools for social action and positive social change.

Gender: socially assigned characteristics

Gender refers to the socially-assigned characteristics of women and men and their social relationships wherein women have been systematically subordinated. These gender differences are often based on the perception that certain characteristics assigned to women or men are inherent and unchangeable, when in fact they are shaped by ideological, historical, religious, ethnic, economic and cultural determinants.

Our understanding of gender and technology is built around feminist perspectives on women and ICTs

A critical component of APC's work in the area of gender is creating a platform for women to self-determine their own agendas. APC Women's Networking Support Programme has since 1991 offered space for women to associate freely and securely, organise, network and advocate women's positions and perspectives. WNSP understands that women are not a homogenous group. The space we have created is fundamental in order for women to share experiences, communicate, understand and respect differences and organise action for social change.

APC WNSP's understanding of gender and technology is built around feminist perspectives on women and ICTs. These include debates that uncover and recover women's history in technology as well as exploring and understanding current experiences of access, use and control of new technologies. In order for us and other initiatives and networks committed to using ICTs for social change, APC WNSP has begun work on building a gender and ICT framework which will assist us in examining the relationship of gender and technology as a whole.

This framework - the Gender and ICT Evaluation Methodology (GEM) - is currently in the process of being tested with partners in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe and North America and you can find more information about GEM on the WNSP Website.