He is leaning on a railing, looking cool and passing time. A girl walks by and he quickly follows her up the escalator. He then casually places his foot near hers on the same step. Only the observant can see a mobile phone strapped to his foot. The camera function does his 'peeping' for him, recording the underside of her skirt. But wait, the tables (and camera) are turned. The girl realises his trick and chases him down the escalator, with her friend capturing his act and face on her camera. His 'secret' act turned public as he is shamed and chased in front of the entire subway population.
 
This short video was created by members of Filmmakers Anonymous in Malaysiai in support of the Take Back the Tech campaign to end violence against women using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). It's a precise and clear demonstration of how new technologies can be used to create digital spaces where women become vulnerable to violence and other criminal acts of offence. Importantly, the incident cited above also manifests how women can apply technology to fight for their own rights. 

ICT misuse 

New tools such as mobile phones featuring audio and image recording are becoming increasingly cheaper and more important as a communication platform. Coupled with Internet connectivity, these tools permit an explicitly fast sharing of women's images – quite often without their knowledge or approval.

This raises serious implications on the question of privacy and personal data. For example, a woman in Pakistan reported receiving 30-40 odd calls per day on her mobile phone from strangers soliciting dates and a relationship. Worryingly, these callers appeared to know what she looked like.ii. Upon investigation, she discovered that her mobile phone credit reseller was selling not credit reloads, but telephone numbers and personal descriptions of their female customers as a lucrative form of side business. In another case, a woman in the Philippines sent her computer off for repair and suddenly photos from her hard drive started appearing on the Internet.

Web cameras, global positioning systems and spyware allow domestic violence abusers to track not only their partner's activity on the computer and in the home, but monitor their mobility as well. During an awareness-raising session on violence against women that Azur Development held in Brazzaville, Congo, women questioned whether instances of violence against women are only taking place where everyone is connected to the Internet. Immediately the group had examples of how the mobile phone had become a point of contention for many women in the Congo. Women had suffered abuse at the hands of their spouses for having received calls from men, or for putting a password on their phone.

Take Back The Tech

Violence against women is rooted in unequal power relations between men and women in almost all aspects of life. Concerned about the interconnections between ICTs and violence against women, the Association for Progressive Communications Women's Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP – www.apcwomen.org) launched Take Back the Tech! (www.takebackthetech.net), a yearly campaign, in 2006. This global, collaborative campaign accompanies the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence November 25 through December 10th every year. For each of the sixteen days of the campaign, ordinary ICT users are encouraged to take a new look at the tools they use from the perspective of women's rights. For example, Day 15 last year focused on 'Secure Online Communications: Your Right to Privacy' and encouraged users to be conscious about where images we record with cell phones, web cams or digital cameras, will end up; question how much personal information we are asked to surrender in different web services; learn how to eliminate spyware and erase our tracks when using a computer. The campaign motivates women and girls to explore applications and tools and use them for the fight to end violence against women – online and off.  Campaigners charted survivor hotlines and resistance strategies in online maps; imagined their dream tool to aid in the fight against violence; shared digital post cards and pooled online resources including videos and photos using social bookmarking tools and the common tag, 'takebackthetech'.

Ease of publication and the increased normalisation of Internet in our lives has meant that digital spaces are where people go to get informed and to have discussions, especially given the restrictive nature of many traditional broadcast media. Take Back the Tech suggests how we can use the digital spaces we occupy to raise awareness about violence against women – from something as simple as changing our eMail signature or online messenger status to opening debate in blogs and chat rooms.

The campaign's collaborative open source site and adaptable imagery with a license to share facilitated take up in distant corners of the world, with translations of Take Back the Tech material in more than a dozen languages last year, including Khmer, Portuguese, Bengali and French.

Local campaigners adapted Take Back the Tech to address their specific concerns around violence against women. The global website became an important space for collecting local actions, aggregating blogs in a variety of languages, and pointing to campaign sites that sprang up in Brazil, Cambodia, Mexico, Canada and the UK. The Cambodian siteiii, translated in Khmer, highlighted women's NGO's activities and published media reporting on violence against women. In the UKiv, local campaigners featured a different women's organisation every day, accompanied by an ICT tool highlight.

In Brazil, developing the campaign site was a good excuse to deepen technical skills and research, as campaigners from G2G comment: "It was a great opportunity to learn more about content management systems – the G2G Drupal site and Wordpress blog. We chose Wordpress after quite a bit of research, in particular because it is free software. We also bought a domain specifically for the Brazilian campaign which was exciting and also meant learning more about servers"

Wougnet in Uganda partnered with Women'sNet in South Africa in an SMS campaign 'Stand out, Speak out' across Africa, and blogged all the messages from 170 participants in 13 countries on the Take Back the Tech! campaign sitevi. Silence Speaks in the US shared their existing digital stories on violence against women. Gender and ICT activists in Mexico, Brazil and Uruguay took advantage of the campaign to offer trainings to women's organisations on new ICT tools for advocacy.

Creating politically relevant digital spaces

As campaign organiser, Jac sm Kee, observes, Take Back the Tech! is about looking at digital spaces as politically relevant  and setting aside sixteen days to take simple, creative yet concrete actions to address violence against women. In the process, knowledge is built, familiarisation with technology is instilled and importantly, an attitude about women's relationship with technology is changed. 

Of course, such an enthusiastic response to the campaign is due to women's rights activists strong commitment to fight against violence against women, it's unfortunate pervasiveness in all facets of life, and how we can and must use all means available to ensure women's right to live in a world free of violence.