A Feminist Action Framework on Development and Digital Technologies

"Through a feminist lens that brings together economic justice and gender justice concerns, this paper traces the key elements of the right to access, right to knowledge and right to development in the network society context."

From the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), this document uses feminist theories on economic and gender justice to provide "strategic directions for feminist advocacy in relation to information and communications technologies (ICTs)."  The three-pronged approach (rights to access, knowledge and development) aids in expressing the 'right to communicate' in a guiding framework. Specific agendas for advocacy and for feminist movement building are provided in the recommendations.

Using a composite approach, the document seeks to apply feminist conceptual tools to promote accounting for the lived experience of women at the margins of the economy using a new conception of the "right to communicate" that goes beyond the current policies of inclusion. The authors dispute the public/private provision of internet access, finding that it does not have transformative potential for women at the margins due to their being “unattractive" to the market economy. Not only is their access compromised, but their privacy may even be compromised. An example is Facebook’s Free Basics which provides cost-free access to limited websites, giving those sites economic advantage - violating net neutrality - while mining personal information, which, especially for sexual and reproductive health and rights "info-outreach", can be a violation of privacy.

Social norms may also: limit women’s access to technology, apply social censorship, and open lines of online harassment and state surveillance. "Another trend is datafication of bodies. Digital platforms are capturing extensive information about bodily functions to create 'body-as-information' models, which can aid market and medical research agencies."

"A gender-just conception of a right to access digital technologies, including the internet, is one where such access is:

• Universal and affordable.
• Unconditional and equal, whereby the end-to-end principle of the internet/network neutrality is treated as sacrosanct. Access arrangements that lead to a tiered internet, stratified along the lines of the ability to pay, are not permitted. However, “protective discrimination” by regulatory authorities for free access to public interest content, like emergency services and public services, may not be considered a violation of network neutrality.
• Unfettered, that is, without social control in the form of community/household level policing/online vigilantism that curtails women’s access.
• Meaningful, whereby access enables an expansion of strategic life choices for women, without posing threats to their bodily integrity, informational privacy or personal autonomy."

Among the recommendations are the following:

• For governments - 
• Lower connection charges and fees (licensing, for example) while establishing public access points, including specified programmes and quotes for women's organisations.
• Invest in access cultures at the grassroots for women including skills for active citizenship and knowledge development, for example, on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
• Introduce net neutrality legislation. 
• "Use e-government as a strategic tool to promote women’s empowerment and gender equality."
• Enact protective legislation for private data and end excessive surveillance.
• "Upgrade legal-institutional response mechanisms for VAW [violence against women] so that they effectively address the different manifestations of technology-mediated violence against women, including sexist content that may not be sexually explicit or considered ‘obscene’. With respect to determining the responsibility of the internet intermediary in responding to complaints of online gender-based violence (GBV), laws must ensure that the intermediary does not become the default adjudicator."Invest in localised knowledge for digital sources in local languages with respect for local non-digital communication and for the promotion of women's voices, enacting Intellectual property legislation "grounded in a right to knowledge perspective."
• Amend/update workers’ rights laws to cover technology related models.
• Design access policy to boost economic participation of marginalised women.
• Decentralise national data architecture to enable citizen capacities.
• For global policy processes - 
• Re-examine the notion of a Digital Solidarity Fund in light of  "the impact of market-driven solutionism"
• As part of developing a global framework for data usage governance, outline global obligations for protections needed when metadata surveillance is the consideration.
• Adopt an international governance framework that is guided by a public interest logic.
• Address internet-related public policy issues: "It is not possible to tackle the planetary scale of exploitation, crime and threat of cyber warfare nor harness the promise of connectivity for empowerment and well being of the majority of the world’s women, without an international treaty on human rights on the internet...."
• Develop rules on data ownership and agree on protocols on "data for development" management.
• Protect and promote women’s human rights taking into account their economic and social position in a digital and "datafied" world.