Women and Internet Governance By Mutwiri Mutuota NAIROBI, Kenya, September 28- While many sectors struggle to achieve gender parity, women have played a proactive role in the development, advancement and consumption of the internet. The Women and Internet Governance session at the 6th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Nairobi recognised and hailed the role female leaders and consumers of ICT have played in the global growth of cyber space. Interventions from some of the world’s leading female ICT policy makers at government and private sector as well as web technology based entrepreneurs acknowledged that women were not shying away from being part and parcel of the digital revolution. The Association of Progressive Communicators (APC) while making an intervention on Women access to the internet for instance, told the meeting that many women in Asia countries such as Taiwan and China had turned to the internet to highlight gender bias and injustices to great effect. “In Taiwan for example, more women are using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to report cases of domestic violence and their voices are being heard,” an APF representative told the forum. Nigerian entrepreneur, Nnenna Nwakanma stated during her intervention that while women were making significant strides in attaching themselves to the policy making machinery in ICT, there was need to make many more able to generate web content. “We need to create more women to generate content tailored to their needs so that they can enjoy (cyber) space. I’m an example of how one can make a living from churning content for the internet and my firm runs from the table room and kitchen,” she intoned. With millions of women accessing ICT through mobile phones and computers, the cyber world has unfortunately opened another front for gender violence against them. The keynote intervention during the Women and Internet Governance session was the presentation of a report by the Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANET) titled Study on Women and Cyber Crime in Kenya: The Dark Side of ICTS presented by Alice Munyua, Muriuki Mureith and Grace Githaga. It tabled grim findings on how the internet was being used to make women the subject of gender abuse at an alarming scale as Githaiga explained when she presented the report. “Women continue to be at risk of being victims of psychological violence through the internet and mobile technology,” she summed. In her illustration, she recounted the tribulations of Patricia Kihoro, a Kenyan contestant at the reality television show, Tusker Project Fame. “Patricia had to change her Facebook account settings after receiving thousands of hate messages on her inbox after voting out one of the audiences favourites. She told us she was so afraid of moving out to the streets when she returned home the show ended. The other rising technology induced violations of women’s rights was through sending abusive text messages that had evolved to include images with the advent of multimedia enabled phones. “The lack of specific cybercrime/cyber security legislation makes it even more difficult to punish those who use ICTs tools to conduct violence against women. “While, the review of the Kenya Communications Amendment Act, enacted in January 2009, begins to deal with the problem, it does not explicitly deal with all cyber crime and cyber security issues on the person and specifically women,” Githaga quoted the expansive report commissioned last year. With all present resolving to press for enactment of policies to safeguard women from cyber crime, Eunice Kariuki of the Kenya ICT Board stressed the urgent need to develop programmes to ensure global e-justice. “We need more women leaders in IT space as a lasting intervention to ensure e-justice. Women leaders in ICT will play a key role in formulation of policies meant to safeguard their interests in addition to making the advancements more user friendly to them,” Kariuki said. Drawing from her personal experience, she conceded the path towards ensuring gender parity in ICT was still long. The KICTANET report highlighted, “Cyber violence is more difficult for police to handle because people do it in the privacy of their homes. People can use the internet and email facilities wherever they find themselves and in this way hide what they do. It can be anonymous and therefore more dangerous.” “There is need to ensure a proper balance between the interests of law enforcement and respect for fundamental human rights. Such rights also include the right to freedom of expression and the rights concerning the respect for privacy,” it recommends. Alice Munyua, the Chair of Kenya IGF Steering Committee lead the women present in paying tribute to the late Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have the strength to survive, you have the power to succeed. Life is all about choices we make depending upon the situation we are in. Go forth and rule the World!