November 25 marked the beginning of 16 days of activism for ending gender-based violence against women, and also the Take Back the Tech! (TBTT) campaign. For those who are not familiar with TBTT, a backgrounder is included at the end of this post.

Take Back the Tech! is a collaborative campaign to reclaim information and communication technologies (ICT) to end violence against women.

Shahzad Ahmad of BytesforAll has been participating in the campaign since 2006. However, he says it was not until 2009, when the MDG3 Project came to Pakistan and P@SHA and Bytes for All started to work on activities related to it, that TBTT started getting any visibility locally, which he credits to the hard work of TBTT campaigners.

Jehan Ara, president of P@SHA, concedes that when she joined BytesforAll as partners in the cause, she did not foresee how personally involved she would become. “The 16 days of activism turned into creative expression and then into a mission, and for us in Pakistan it has gone well beyond the 16 days to become a full-time effort.”

Says Jehan Ara, “When I first met the women from the Association for Progressive Communication Women’s Support Network in Malaysia, I was totally amazed at their passion and commitment toward the cause.” Today, the campaigners have become “living, breathing, 24-hour TBTT activists,” she says. Organisations like P@SHA and individuals — old and young —who were not traditionally involved in activism have joined the cause, and campaigners include technologists, students, lawyers, artists, photographers, entrepreneurs, celebrities and parliamentarians.

Gender-based violence has been an ongoing struggle for years and years but, as technologists and entrepreneurs, says Jehan Ara, “We have not looked at how the tools we create and use for empowerment can and are very easily misused sometimes to perpetrate violence, to harass, to stalk and invade the privacy of women and girls.”

A recent example of such misuse of technology is the Bhayo rape case (see Digitised Dishonour). Technology was used as a tool to perpetuate violence. Thus, reclaiming the technology space is an integral part of the TBTT campaign.

“Our purpose is to create an awareness of the dangers that are lurking due to the ease of monitoring and stalking, and how women can keep themselves secure and safe online,” says Jehan Ara. “We also wish to inculcate in women and girls that they can harness technology to empower themselves, to share and communicate and to create safe environments for themselves.”

Shahzad adds: “For us TBTT means the opening up of cyberspace for women and making this space safe for them for their social interactions and professional growth, and for the promotion of equality among the different socio-economic roles in society.”

This year, the campaign focuses on the “the right to expression and information as basic building blocks to end violence against women.” Over the course of these 16 days, the campaign will take the form of slogans, blog posts, workshops and discussions, visible both on ground and in cyberspace. And Shahzad is optimistic that with the continued efforts of TBTT campaigners, the campaign will do wonders and “touch lives.”

Backgrounder: Take Back the Tech!

Take Back The Tech! campaign calls on all information communication technology (ICT) users — especially women and girls — to take control of technology and strategically use any ICT platform (mobile phones, instant messengers, blogs, websites, digital cameras, email, podcasts, etc.) for activism against gender-based violence.

Take Back the Tech! accompanies the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence (November 25 — December 10 each year) with daily actions that explore different aspects of violence against women and ICT tools.

In 2005, the Association for Progressive Communications’ Women’s Network Support Programme (APC WNSP) developed research papers that looked at the connection between ICT and violence against women, an issue that received little attention or discussion at that time. From sharing the findings with women’s rights and communication rights advocates in different spaces, APC WNSP found this to be a critical issue that compelled deeper engagement. As such, Take Back the Tech! sets out to:

• Create safe digital spaces that protect everyone’s right to participate freely, without harassment or threat to safety.
• Realise women’s rights to shape, define, participate, use and share knowledge, information and ICT.
• Address the intersection between communication rights and women’s human rights, especially VAW.
• Recognise women’s historical and critical participation and contribution to the development of ICT.

Since it began, the TBTT campaign has been adapted and owned by individuals, groups, networks and organisations all over the world. Campaigners have initiated local Take Back The Tech! campaigns in Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, the Congo, Germany, India, Macedonia, Mexico, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, UK, Uruguay, USA, etc.

In Pakistan the TBTT campaign is a collaboration between BytesforAll (a South Asian civil society rights organization) and P@SHA (the trade organization representing the Pakistan IT industry).