Feminist Visions of the Digital Economy in MENA

The Access to Knowledge for Development (A2K4D) Center, in cooperation with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) - Berlin and IT for Change, is hosting the closed virtual regional workshop on ‘Feminist Visions of the Digital Economy in MENA'. The workshop will curate Middle East and North African (MENA) perspectives on the “The Deal we Always Wanted: A Feminist Action Framework for the Digital Economy.”

The workshop will host with feminist scholars, techies, and activists from across the MENA region and will broach global and region-specific issues at the intersection of gender and the digital economy, in an effort to formulate a roadmap for a feminist future of work. The regional dialogues taking place will lead to a collaborative ‘feminist UN agenda for innovative and technological change’ which will be presented at the upcoming 67th iteration of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

Register here to attend.

Resource Guide

1. Towards a Feminist Digital Economy

Essential Readings:

• The Deal we Always Wanted - FES Working Group on Feminist Visions of the Future of Work

• How Digitally Restructured Value Chains Are Reshaping Labor Futures for Women in the Global South - Karishma Banga, Becky Faith

• The Urgency of Gender Justice in the Digital Economy – Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami

Supplementary Readings:

• Gender Equality in the Digital Economy: Emerging Issues - Anita Gurumurthy, Nandini Chami, et al.

2. Data Colonialism and Digital Justice

Essential Readings:

• Artificial Intelligence and Inequality in the Middle East: The Political Economy of Inclusion - Nagla Rizk

• Beyond the North-South Fork on the Road to AI Governance: An Action Plan for Democratic and Distributive Integrity

• Data Colonialism: Analysis of Europe’s Trade Agenda - Sofia Scasserra and Carolina Martínez Elebi

Supplementary Readings:

• Understanding Gender and Racial Bias in AI – A Conversation with Dr. Alex Hanna

• The Global AI Agenda: The Middle East and Africa – MIT Technology Review

3. Women in the Platform Economy

Essential Readings:

• From ill-founded delusions to real possibilities: An e-commerce agenda for women’s empowerment – Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami

• How the Platform Economy Sets Women Up to Fail – Zuha Siddiqui and Youyou Zhou

Supplementary Readings:

• Who’s the Fairest [PODCAST explores the protests by beauty care workers in India] – Bama Athreya and Soumyarendra Barik

4. Digital Economic Governance: Development Considerations

Essential Readings:

• Good for Whom? Reading between the lines at Digital Davos – Laura Mann

• A history of feminist engagement with development and digital technologies - Anita Gurumurthy

Supplementary Readings:

• Shaping the Future of Multilateralism Feminist, decolonial economic solutions to address interconnected global crises - Emilia Reyes

• Shifting Responsibilities without Changing the Balance of Power: What Chance of Equality with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda? - Marina Durano, Nicole Bidegain Ponte, Corina Rodriguez Enriquez

Deep dive into the MENA region

• Social media previously used post-2011 as public forum where women (and everyone else) used social media for political participation in the absence of an alternative public political arena

  • https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13552074.2021.1978726

  • https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol22/iss9/20/?fr=operanews

  • https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/978-1-83982-848-520211037/full/html

• Digital authoritarianism and surveillance: authoritarianism, surveillance, Palestine

  • https://freedomhouse.org/country/egypt/freedom-net/2021

  • https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315212357-6/settler-colonial-surveillance-criminalization-social-media-madalena-santos

  • https://online.ucpress.edu/jps/article-abstract/41/2/27/54496/Digital-Occupation-Gaza-s-High-Tech-Enclosure

  • https://www.mei.edu/publications/nowhere-hide-impact-israels-digital-surveillance-regime-palestinians

  • https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-32706-4_7

  • https://kohljournal.press/incarceration-surveillance-policing

  • https://kohljournal.press/institutional-surveillance

  • https://kohljournal.press/slowing-it-down

• Cyber borders

  • https://sexualrightsinitiative.com/resources/decoding-cyber-borders

  • https://www.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/1-Imposing-and-evading-cyber-borders-thr-sovereignty-dilemma.pdf

• Online gender-based violence and cybercrime (revenge porn, hacking and publishing intimate photos)

  • https://genderit.org/feminist-talk/online-gbv-palestine-means-losing-out-womens-participation

  • https://www.mei.edu/publications/gendered-violence-online-cybersecurity-whom

  • https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mohammed-Yachoulti/publication/341464314_Masculinities_and_violence_in_the_MENA_region/links/5ec2fc90458515626cb4b26f/Masculinities-and-violence-in-the-MENA-region.pdf#page=92

  • https://euromedrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Online-gender-violence-in-MENA-region.pdf

• Policing online sexualities: Tik tok women and use of vague laws to lock up working class women content creators (as opposed to the companies themselves not witnessing backlash)

  • https://www.theafricareport.com/122474/egypts-tiktok-girls-jailed-as-a-convenient-scapegoat/

  • https://www.apc.org/sites/default/files/ARROW_RighttoFoE.pdf p.11

  • https://kohljournal.press/women-tiktok-their-freedom-my-freedom

  • https://timep.org/commentary/analysis/egypts-tiktok-crackdown-and-family-values/

  • https://kohljournal.press/sex-work-and-the-tunisian-state

  • https://kohljournal.press/icts-as-the-bullring