EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES ENHANCING MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
OCTOBER 25, 2013
11:00
DYNAMIC COALITION ON GENDER INTEGRATING
WOMEN'S RIGHTS AT THE IGF SPACE
The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Eigth Meeting of the IGF, in Bali, Indonesia. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
>> Good morning.
Because it's kind of like a strategizing meeting, it will be good if we can all move a little forward so we can not be so dispersed in the room.
That would be very helpful.
In fact it's better if we can get rid of the tables, but since we cannot, this is what we can do, come closer.
Hello, welcome to the gender dynamic coalition meeting.
My name is jack, from the association for progressive communications
I will help to moderate and facilitate discussions, but really it's a strategizing meeting. Please feel free to jump in and say stuff.
Also far what we have for the agenda today is I wanted to share with you two agenda DC activities from last year that we did and we agreed upon.
One is the agenda report card that we started in 2011, and it was formally adopted in the workshop reporting process in 2012.
It will be good to see how we is can improve as monitoring process for gender and issues in IGF as well as possible in other platforms.
That is one.
The other is the agenda and IG round table we decided we wanted to do last year in azerbaijan, and we did run this year.
Just a sense of how well this has gone, whether this is something we again want to replicate next year, and how to do it differently, you know, learning from this year.
And thirdly is to get a sense from you how do you think, to what extent has, your own assessment of the integration between gender and women's rights in this IGF, your thoughts around it, an assessment and discussion
I think there was a post galluP party yesterday, maybe if you were there, if you can tell us a bit about what happened, any ideas that emerged, it would be good to share.
That is kind of it from what I have in my head. If there's anything else that you would like to talk about.
If you are on your laptops, it's maybe easier if you actually search for it.
It's in gender I.T..org.
If you go to gender I.T..org at the front page, the very top column on the right, there's an article that says results of gender report card 2012.
This is what I'm pulling on top, some of the highlights.
An its quite a lot.
Basically from it being part of the formal workshop reporting process means that every single workshop report has actually filled this in and indicated to what extent they thought gender was integrated.
It's actually been very useful because when we try to do it the year before we did it on our own, ran around and tried to fill in this terms of different workshops. This one we actually got high numbers because it's part of the reporting process.
If you don't report on your workshop, then it's very hard for you to actually reply to organize workshop for the subsequent years.
It actually sort of integrated into the reporting and accountability planning process of IGF itself.
So we got 89 workshop reports as you can see.
And what we found is in terms of numbers of participation, there isn't a huge disparty actually. Quite fairly equal numbers of women and men participating at IGF.
But this doesn't necessarily translate into, A, speakers, B, content and substance of discussion, and what does this mean in terms of trying to assess this much more difficult, much more complex area of integration of gender.
Let's see now.
Amongst all the different workshops, the thematic areas that have the most kind of, the ones that say yes, you know, there's definitely some extent where gender was included as a theme, was around primarily on security, openness, and privacy.
Sorry, Internet governance for development.
Yep.
And security, openness and privacy, each had one workshop in which no women participated.
This is just participation.
So if you look at the table number 2, you can see about half is the largest percentage in terms of like participation of women by theme.
It really like is really quite equal in that sense, the number of women and men interested in each of the different thematic areas.
It's not such a huge disparity where only men with interested in one theme and women in another.
You can see as well when we go to like, when we are in the IGF spaces, we see there's quite a lot, I don't know why.
You heard that?
I'm making this website, sorry.
Yeah.
Just like fitting in the thing.
It's not really fitting.
Cool, thanks.
So I think about half, out of the 90 workshops, about half of the workshops indicate the gender was not seen as a relevant thematic area, relevant to the thematic area and therefore was not included in the workshop discussions.
And we deliberately had this as a category in the gender report card. Sometimes it's not relevant. Not that everything has to be rendered visible, and it's okay.
When it's half, also look at this data and think about it. Okay, what does that mean in that sense.
Is it about being able to make the connection and issues a lot clearer and so on
I like you have moustache on.
We go to, so this is what you can see in table 3.
Not related, which is, it's the highest percentage basically, 55 percent, not relevant is one, no answer is 20 percent.
Mentioned is 19 percent.
In contrast where it's seen as very very important, gender was the main thing, only one percent, which is basically four out of the 89 workshops.
Out of all of the workshops, only four said it was absolutely critical and we needed to center and mention it.
Ideally we would like to have mention be the biggest chunk, even if it's not the key issue, at least it was raised and mentioned.
There's always some kind of a dimension.
Ideally we would like to see that chunk of the stats to be a lot fatter.
Discussion of gender by participation of women.
I don't remember that.
Oh, right, okay.
The fourth table is whether if there was more women, it means there will be a greater chance that gender would be discussed.
Sorry.
Sorry
I did not see yours.
The fourth table is basically we're trying to see whether there's a relationship between actual participation of women and the discussion of gender, which is actually maybe a better problem for us as well because we are also con flaiting equal is for women and women are the only ones who raise gender.
Maybe we need to improve the way we are thinking about this for the next year.
Anyway, we have this question, we analyzed and found okay, it's true, on the one gender was the main thematic area, almost all participants were women.
It will be interesting to see how this has shifted this year. Maybe that is a segue into our conversation around the IGF round table in the different sessions where gender was discussed and it's true women were the most participants, and if so, so what, and if not, so what.
I guess that is kind of it.
For the fifth we asked about recommendationed on how workshop participants thought that gender could be improved, how IGF could really integrate gender more.
Some of the comments, I haven't had a chance to look at it closely yet, but it could be, but the most logical link seems to be around human rights, and that where it wasn't raised, it was just seen to be like somehow, yeah, maybe there's a connection, but maybe not super related, and I'm not sure how to raise it.
That also is an indication some capacity building is needed in terms of understanding what is gender and IGF issues
I will stop there. If you have any comments or thoughts in terms of gender report card, what is this revealing to you, it will be good.
.
>> A small comment
I think when I went to the gender report form, there were no option for just saying no. Like gender was not expressed or it was no because it's not relevant, I think is already bias. I guess sometimes they don't raise gender issues because there's no one to talk about it or no one who has seen you or no one who has seen the gender perspective.
You also raise the fact that even men can raise the gender issue.
It should not be related.
And the more generally on the participation, I have the impression that there were more women in the session related to what I call social affairs. Like in the chat protection, you see a lot of women, when in all the session around the infrastructure or what, there would be no women at all and very less participation
I think we should also, beyond the fact of having a woman in the session and raising gender perspective, to see also where women are allowed and why. If it's still in line with the social and technical stuff are for men and social and self stuff is for women, which would also go as far as this.
>> The Internet governance.
Any other comments or feedback?
>> Think several things.
Maybe for the next year is one, is to get the reports. You're assuming here, think we're probably hampered by the fact we will have to wait for reports from all the workshops to come up before we do, you know, a consolidated report.
But if we could have that much earlier, we might be able to influence and give recommendations to say this is what the findings are, and depending, right, three or four recommendations that say in this area there's women, in these areas, you know.
So have very specific recommendations coming out of the report.
But with enough time for the mg to address those recommendations
I think this is probably not enough just to look at in a more qualitative, probably in depth way, how we want to move forward.
Just thinking from, again, from the resource, if we're able to consolidate it, let's say maybe we can do interviews or surveys.
This is going to next steps and suggestions, right?
With maybe people who have done a lot, and those who have not done anything.
Just to give us a sense, you know, of finding out why, perhaps, and have much more, you know, directly talking more with stakeholders or these groups.
Yeah, just two ideas there.
Thanks.
>> Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, this is Nina.
Okay
I just wanted to call attention to the daily.
There's an IGF daily that has a booth over there.
And every morning I have been going over to read the articles.
Even this morning I have gone
I think there's a fair representation of the gender panels, actually far more proportionately than what is in the overall IGF column itself.
I wanted to just highlight the daily has done a good job representing gender issues.
And this we need to put maybe into perspective for the next years because we can't follow all the sessions, but at least they do a kind of summary. I find that interesting and I want to say thank you to them for a good work.
>> Sorry, I was trying to do three things at once, and my brain is not that clever.
One of the things I think about is the difference of the way women were participating and they themselves were seeing connections, if they had participated in hosting a regional IGF.
So in Latin America we saw some amazing interventions from Columbian women who had lowed the previous IGF.
And those though there were many women at the Latin American regional IGF, we struggled, it's one thing to be present as women, and we're not very much interested in counting heads, though it's a necessary sort of step, what really interests us are the issues and interconnection of issues
I wonder at the very least, it's okay? Not going to explode?
We're worried about the tech.
At the very least when developing workshop proposals, just as there's insist tense on multi‑stakeholderism, I don't think there should be necessarily insistence on sex or the gender, that is one thing, but what could be some things that are suggested to help them connect the dots when developing workshop proposal so they are bringing in these ideas
I hate gender checklists in one sense, but they are useful for some people if it's difficult for many of us to make the connections.
So that is like at the regional and local levels, what could be some ideas as we're working in a multi‑stakeholder process to help those mult stakeholders bring gender issues on board and also here that goes beyond counting, which I know we were trying do. But it's harder to get the other detail. It's easier to count
I would like to hear from people. There were other gender sessions here.
And so who was involved in those, and how did those play out in terms of informing, how other people are making connections
I haven't been at all the sessions.
>> We will talk about when we are assessing broadly overall gender and IGF this year, how did it go in terms of the different discussions and workshop.
Really good ideas, thanks Erica.
>> Feel free jump in.
>> I came in 15 minutes late.
Apologies.
Maybe now that I'm coming to think wait, we can assess the gender report at the global IGF level, but the report that has been required of us here has not been required of regional IG forums.
Like I organize Africa IGF, I organize west Africa IGF, I'm organizing my national IGF, and I do not have any recollection of any gender approach to the reporting.
Yes, the IGF secretariat in Geneva requires us to sends in a report, but there's no gender notion to it.
It's true there is a level of autonomy in the regional, subregion all in and national IGFs, and we are not very sure if this could be done.
But I'm just flagging it so we include it
I know in the national IGF there's no requirement whatsoever. We are being asked to say what are the sessions or who participated.
There is a multi‑stakeholder requirement in the report but no gender specific issue that is attached to those reports at any of the levels except for the global level.
>> Really great idea
I think we were talking about like untangling this whole notion of mult steak shareholders and numbers, how we do this.
What I'm hearing from you, there's a possibility of even having something like a capacity building workshop at the next IGF or national and regional IGF organizers on how to run agenda report card in your planning or something like that.
Yeah?
>> This guy works well, works your agenda mind off when you dress like a guy.
At the national level, I think those who came to the national and regional IG round table on day zero, I was pointing out that in my 12 years of WISSIS and IG related stuff, women are better organizers of IG forums, but that is not to say the men end up doing better.
But actually at every point in time you see a whole lot of women around it. But that still does not give the gender correlation.
Might be good for us here in this session to actually do a gender mapping of IG activity itself.
That is who are the organizers. If you come to Africa and I tell you were it not for the APC girls, we would have been in trouble now. Yeah.
So there's a whole lot of it going on.
But it would be good to hear from other regions who actually are the people.
The people who make the speech on opening ceremony, that is a different thing. But the people who do the organizing, who do the backlog work, we may need to do some kind of gender mapping around that.
I'll be interested.
And let me just end now by saying that I want to give a huge thank you to Judy Okiti who is not here. Some of you know she is have a person with a disability, but she has been great in the Africa IG arena at all levels.
She's not available to be here, but Judy, if you are following, thank you very much.
>> Thank you, Nina.
Anyone organized a regional IGF? Erica with experience in Latin IGF.
Anyone else? I know Anya, you were doing India IGF and maybe you can share.
Anyone else who did national and regional IGFs?
>> The report we did get, I didn't attend, but one of our members did, this was for all, and the report was there was nothing on gender or women's rights in the Asia IGF.
The next one apparently is going to be in Hiderabad.
Think it was pointed out in a meeting.
>> Thank you
I think the Asia Pacific IGF in general, I find it a very male dominated affair.
Not saying there's no women involved, but I really find it maybe also because there's a lot of academia centrally involved, civil society a slightly different position so far.
So maybe it's also the composition of the group.
I don't know.
But yes, next year in Hyderabad, we have a good opportunity to change things.
The India IGF didn't actually happen this year. Various meetings in Delhi last week, but none of these was actually an IGF.
As far as I know, there were also no sessions specifically looking at gender
I went to one meeting which was on cyber security, a two‑day event, and in that one it struck me how many people in the room were men and how many panels only had men.
So it was still like a very basic levels even, no gender quality there.
The women who were in the room were quite vocal, so that was good.
>> Anyone else who would like to share.
>> There was an Indonesia IGF for the first time in 2012.
Fortunately we're having space to talk about women's rights and Internet rights at Indonesia Internet governs.
Then what I want to say is also that there's other qualities and the human rights commissioner from several countries that I think it's also interesting.
We had a meeting outside IGF, a dinner meeting, but I got lots of lessons learned. The commissioners had their own committee and space to talk about Internet, and they had their own role and position to bring in different level besides on the CSO levels.
And they have a very good conversation that actually what they call they want to have high level discussion among the commissioners to talk about Internet rights, gender, and women's rights.
And also my lesson learned from this IGF is how actually that, for example, APC or women's rights network in the IGF monitoring from the preparation of each IGF.
For example like we are facing right now how the Internet valley can happen. We don't know where before.
I mean, even like there are local organizers, but how we can integrate or work from the very beginning of the preparation of IGF so that we can present something like Internet not really visible, because it's like putting back our progress as women and Internet rights.
>> Any thoughts?
>> I feel and I think that we should move, even keeping the ami list, the gender card with the quotas, to having someone that is our ambassador es.
To have someone who is a champion
I would like not to risk having the next IGF another miss.
The only way I think we can bypass the miss is that we look for women that make the difference, women that make the difference, the local national spaces because they took up Internet policy issues, and so they are the pioneers, that represent gender and Internet rights in their own realities or regions.
We think to make this champion visible so that we keep the ami list and quotas, but we start demonstrating that we have the content and it's constantly there, so we avoid the next miss somewhere and going in this black and white and confronting always women within women. We don't want to diminish women. But we need to bypass the metrics.
>> I hear you saying we need cooperation with people like you, Camille, with people involved in the local organizing from Indonesia IGF to let us know, because we do not know, what is happening and going on and what kind of support you can get, you need from the sort of gender dynamic coalition community to help org this, if it's about talking to the secretariat or the Mac or whatever.
Maybe that is one concrete way in which we can make this happen. Which then goes back to valuen Tina as point, we need to look at who are the gender and Internet governance, I guess advocates in the next IGF, where is it? Brazil.
Okay. That's good.
You know that is quite a vibrant kind of like a feminist activist working on Internet rights issues that we can connect with and sort of try to get them in the organizing, support their participation at the organizing level so that we can make sure this doesn't happen.
Yeah.
.
>> Good morning, my name is Kiatri from the south Asian press alliance.
Maybe it's strategic to raise the issue here because of the more visibility
I think one of the obvious missing points is really media strategy for IGF and people coming to the IGF
I think a lot of it is confined within very limited groups
I think maybe this is something worth considering for taking the level of discussions or impact of pushing for more gender approaches, is to also include media representatives who are already interested or who could at least explore the issues a little bit more in the context of Internet governance.
Think this is really critical because otherwise it stays in the confines of the discussions in these halls
I think that if we want to mainstream the issues of Internet governance as well as looking through the lens of gender, without the media I think it's difficult.
I'm critical of the media. I come from that background. But I do think it's an investment really worthwhile.
If it's possible to think about future strategies that incorporate some kind of media presence and participation.
If you are thinking about the capacity building, to include some media members as well, I think that would be a really worthwhile investment.
>> Speaks to Nina as point, she checks out the daily IGF.
Were you already here? You heard that. Quite a good coverage.
Maybe I will also like to go back to the report card and close that discussion.
So where do we want to take this and who amongst us is actually interested in to work on this further.
To give you a bit of background how it happened.
APC really lobbied through the mag and there was a champion within the mag, multi‑stakeholder advisory group to do a gender champion, your point about champion is well taken.
To push this through and get the Mac to agree. This is a good thing to include within the reporting process.
So it's in the form on the IGF website. So it's included like a few questions within the form.
But after that what we thought would happen is that the data would be extracted as part of IGF's regular assessment of their own, you know, IGF has this, they have statistical break downs in terms of participation, who came from each region. But it was left there. We thought we do it and we thought they would. In the end it was close to IGF and no one did anything.
At first I was a bit pissed off, and then I thought, well, it's not okay to say that. If I'm serious about this and if we are committed to the issue, we need to take on the responsibility of pushing this and taking it where we want it to go.
For this particular period we just decided to get somebody to help us, a researcher to help us to pull out the data and do some kind of analysis to figure out what can we see from this and where can it take us
I was actually really happily surprised. Wow, it's IGFing quite a good sense of what is happening and where it's going.
But obviously there's still a lot of gaps and things not working that francois raised and different people.
Anyone in this room who is very interested to further develop the gender report card as a concrete activity and strategy for the gender dynamic coalition, not just the global IGF but to push it to be integrated into regional and national IGFs.
Like you said, maybe we can start like a working group on this.
Yeah.
Sir.
Yeah, names, like people.
People who love stats and forms, research, okay
I like it.
I'm putting it down.
Mishi, Francois, valentina (speaking Spanish).
Caroline?
Cool
I will just close that for now.
Suffice to say we will look at this, finalize the findings, make it a bit more recommendations oriented, and work on it for the next stage.
Sorry? Speaking Spanish? Hola.
Habla espanol?
Si, (misunderstanding).
.
.
.
From there this was discussions around trying to organize media strategy. That is really good idea.
Gaia, maybe this is something you might want to coordinate in terms of thinking through a media strategy.
With the coalition, you know, not to say that.
Just want to make sure we don't lose some of the ideas coming up before we move on to the next discussion area.
The third one is around mapping of people who are gender conscious.
Mapping of gender champions, I guess, within organizing processes for IGF at global, regional, national level.
This is something Nina is interested in pursuing.
You were saying here, but maybe it's difficult to do it here unless, we did a little bit of it.
But it's quite useful in terms of trying to figure out how to organize things.
So is this something you would like to take on? As a mentor? Okay.
.
>> Nina: As a mentor, yes, to the measure of my availability.
>> Okay, but let's try and commit to this as well. Like as many people as possible.
There's a lot of collective intelligence in this room that we can really, think Anya, if this is something you can be part of, that will be great, because you're also very involved in terms of organizing the IGF.
Like Nina.
Mentally, yes, depending on capacity.
Please.
Okay.
I guess we can move on to the next topic, which is just around how do you feel like, an assessment is how do you think gender has been integrated into this year's IGF in terms of the sessions you have gone to, what are the interesting things you have noted in terms of either participation, thematic areas or conversations.
Just your overall sense of how things are like, beyond like sort of report card kind of scenario.
.
>> I think the civil society group did a great job. Whatever was anything connected with rights, to make sure that gender, sexual right, women's rights have been on the spot. In a very constructive way, not just an isolated voice
I find, I listened to very very good speakers, women speakers, but they were not connecting the two issues.
So they were expert in their field, because I didn't seeing a connection, they didn't spell out the issue of gender. Except more concentrated when we talk about civil society.
Civil society did connect everywhere but in the panels when women were speaking were competent but not connecting the two issues most of the time
I think that we have a lot of work to do to make the connection.
>> Anyone else? Maybe from that side of the room.
The quiet empty side.
Betsy, maybe you would like to say something.
>> I'm Betsy graphen with the U.S. department of state and I work on Internet freedom and human rights programming, including gender integration in our work.
One thing I have been thinking about here is kind of along the lines of who are the champions within governments on gender.
Part of what I have observed is when it comes to a lot of government priorities, people tend to choose things like surveillance over like a gender panel or something like this.
And so what I am trying to explore is more along the lines of what we have been discussing, how to integrate those things and not ghettoize gender in its own kind of separate category.
So, and I would be interested.
Is there anyone here from governments in this room?
I think I might be the only one.
(Chuckles).
See, it was I'm saying!.
So anyway
I would be interested to hear from you all that you know within the different governments that you interact with are gender champions, and perhaps I can help catalyze something from that bucket from which I am mostly interacting with.
Please let me know.
>> Thank you, that is really useful.
We have now a sense of civil society are pretty active, governments are kind of deprioritizing
I wonder if Randy or somebody else might want to comment on private sector, anyone from the community you might want to talk about that as well.
First to maybe respond to the question.
Amongst what we know here, do you know if like which government has particular strong gender champions?
For example Kenya has traditionally had a very strong gender champion within the government.
>> Sweden.
>> Part of this space like an Internet.
>> (Inaudible).
>> Maybe that will help like names.
>> (Off microphone).
>> Representatives from the government, like a strong gender advocate also active in these spaces.
Do you know of anyone in particular that we can also then network with and organize with and make sure they are also at least part of this meeting, if nothing else.
Because it's been very strongly civil society emphasized, and that maybe, we need to make it a little bit more mixed in that sense.
.
>> (Off microphone).
>> Governments are not active in this. That is one part of the problem.
Only some governments are active in these spaces.
But maybe not, sorry? Egypt? Yemen?
>> (Off microphone).
>> Yeah, I want to say Egypt, they have had women at that level for a long time. They hosted the first Africa IGF.
And if my sight is clear, from what I saw yesterday, I saw two women officials from the Egyptian government who are here
I have not contacted them and cannot give the identity here, but I have seen them here. And they have been around, and they can mentor other women in the field.
>> Anyone from the India delegation? Mishi and Anya?
Oh, dear. Malaysia, let me put it clearly, they are not here.
>> (Off microphone).
>> South Africa.
Are they even here? Your own governments, do you know who is like a gender, if there's anyone from the government delegation that could potentially be part of breakfast meeting hosted by Betsy at the next IGF like you know, with maybe like three other people from the gender dynamic coalition, from different stakeholders, to talk about what governments can do.
Yeah.
.
>> I'm not as familiar with some of the processes. But I wonder do you all offer any concrete like suggestions or resources for people who are organizing the panels about, I think Erica kind of mentioned gender checklist type thing. Not necessarily that in particular, but something that could help folks who don't have a gender filter to think about some simple and thoughtful ways to think about gender within a more mainstream topic.
Does something like that exist?
>> We have a lot of articles that look at different areas of content when APC's key strategies.
So definitely not one that is overall cross cutting across all the thematic areas.
This could be one thing that we could do together, to write gender and Internet governance primers on key issues.
Like gender, I don't know, on human rights, cyber security, access, development.
Maybe that is something that we can plan as part of our engagement.
That is a good idea.
>> It's so good to have fellow gentlemen in the room
I have been given the name of the Egyptian delegation, and it's 100 percent female.
>> I think I get a bit uncomfortable if we are just inflating the issue of women representation is what we want to do. Yeah? If we want to work with governments, someone from the U.S. state department has to be careful like how they are positioning this. Right?
Because we don't only want women just for women. Who cares. Right?
Having women in the room is just a tactic. If you are not on the table, then you are on the menu. It's not on objective for me. I don't care if there's more women if they are all European or north American. What does that do for us.
At this IGF one of the main numbers is geographical representation. That is a big issue than women. Yes, we exceeded and got half of the participants to be ‑‑ succeeded and got half of the participants to be women.
We can't say Egypt women has a full group of women and not be impressed when that government is one of the most repressive governments currently in the world. Or the U.S. government is behind surveillance, things like the NSA, blatant in your face sort of we're going to see what you are doing and we have access to data, et cetera, and we clap because they organize a round table on gender.
We have to be very careful about these things.
Maybe one of the things we want to do is look at gender as an intersect shunnel anticipation for all the other issues of oppression.
We're talking about oppression, not talking about, you know, just how many women there are versus men.
That is really not what we want to be doing.
Because we won't get anywhere.
>> We got somewhere. At least we know, okay, it's equal but not translating itself in actual substantive dissection which you just did. No, it's a very critical thing
I think it also came out in terms of the some of the conversations on gender and important of intersection all ty.
How do you recommend this works? In terms of say for example concretely. Like how would we try, as the gender dynamic coalition, if we wanted to turn it in an intersectionel platform to look at various forms of discrimination and issues, how would we do this as part of the gender DC, with divergent interest, and not falling into the trope, allowing ourselves because we are women, for all kinds of problematic practices when it comes to the Internet.
It's a tough question, but it's wording reading our minds and think through it a little bit.
Shawna? Someone else who hasn't spoken maybe, someone at the back?
>> I'm wondering if we can reach out to, I mean, I don't know if there's for example a dynamic coalition on people with disabilities, but reaching out to people with disabilities that are coming to the IGF and saying how can we support your participation, how can we ensure that more people are coming and raising those issues within spaces that are being raised in terms of gender, in terms of sexuality, in terms of like you said, intersectionel ty and asking how can we support your engagement in these spaces.
>> Kind of like more active in other dynamic coalitions.
We did in the Internet rights and principles charter one. Maybe that is a way to think how participation did help or not to integrate different kinds of issues.
Tina, Caroline.
I'm not sure how relevant this is because I'm completely new here.
But just crossed my mind that if we are talking about some form of recognition or acknowledgment, the work has to be with some, with a great substance.
And the fact that many of the women do not come to IGF doesn't mean they are not doing anything in their respective countries
I was fascinated with the idea of mapping the championship or something of that sort
I think that could be a very small committee who could nominate women across the world
I would go for women rather than governments because it's very complicated as you articulated it quite well, and go and see from the grass root level who is really doing great work in terms of access, in terms of women rights, in terms of freedom of expression, and bring them in.
Because this is what you want to do.
You don't want to keep it limited and exclusive to people who can afford coming here.
You want to look around the world and see whose ideas, whose work could be acknowledged by this sort of section.
Sorry if I'm saying something that doesn't make much sense.
>> Think that if we want to have gender as an intersectional space, I think that we need to talk with the government and corporate sector.
It's not about are they good enough for us, but they are there. They have work to do. Especially in the government.
It's a question of having a conversation and dialogue
I think that sometimes talking with other women could be easier because I'm sure that they invite them into, they like their daughter, agenda, make them minorities or complying with the standards, they suffer the things each and every woman suffer
I think we should be aware of what governments do and which is the politics of the governments. Then a public officer will never be completely free to be a person except if, you know, decide to not work anymore. And also corporate. Each one has its own agenda.
But this is not a good reason not to have the conversation and dialogue. It will not be easy but we need to have the conversation. Otherwise we will never reach out to the real women and possibly policy
I think we need to be less confrontational. It will not be an easy dialogue but has to take place.
>> That brings it back to what was said earlier
I think it could be, just to add on Shawna, I think it could be interested also to have a champion, a youth champion. From the young people coalition, in that context.
Like I have been to one of the panels I thought that were quite enthusiastic and dynamic. I think it's interesting to think about who is going to follow us when we are going to be too old to be at the IGF.
.
>> Hi, I'm Ben humming from the Philippines
I would still suggest as we map out champions in the civil society and other sectors to really take a look at governments who are proactive and who really help in the gender issue, like Kenya, Brazil, and like in the Philippines we have a commission for women that we work directly with, we support advocacies for women's rights and all these things.
So the reason simply is because government has the resources. And they are really willing to help in the gender rights and issues, why not. Brazil, Kenya, like I said, to a certain extent, we have a commission. And they provide support from time to time.
>> What you are saying reminds me of the freedom online coalition of governments who come together to look at freedom of expression issues on the Internet policy.
So maybe there's no reason why they cannot be, for example, a coalition of governments, while committed to multi‑stakeholder processes, to come together on advancing gender issues, for example, or within the different kinds of coalitions.
That is maybe something to think through.
Camille.
>> I discussed with Layla, you know sometimes a minister, they have a period for five years usually, and sometimes when we already bid a network or conversation with her or him, then after that he or she no longer in that position.
Then like in national commission of women's rights Indonesia it's also quite challenging for them to keep one issue with a commissioner and then that person is no longer there.
So then a new commissioner, then we have to build a network again, a conversation again.
So we have to see that also.
And Layla suggests actually at the government level there are also staff who have civil servants and staying there actually.
It means not only the head or the minister but also involve the lower level of that ministry or commissioner.
Because these people stay there as civil servants. So they can influence the new minister or the new commissioners.
>> Thank you.
Champions will come and go, but the people who do the books stays usually.
>> Quickly, I agree with you on that point.
There's a lot of working with folks like myself that work very hard to put gender and other things on the agenda for our bosses, and those are the people that you really want to have engaged, and they can get you the time and attention that is needed with those folks that are higher level.
I'll just note too the freedom online coalition is working to explore concretely how to do gender better, address gender, and they are working to create workshop processes that will have concrete civil society involvement.
One of those workshops will likely be on gender.
So that is something to keep an eye out for the future
I can also let people know about that when it starts happening.
>> Cool, thank you.
Would anyone like to talk about what yesterday's discussion, if anything, came up from that? Nigata, was there anything that came out? Did you all just get drunk and roll around the beach?
>> (Off microphone).
>> A dinner organized by a few people. On the gender dynamic coalition list, the invitation extended to just get together. We don't have to always sit in this room. We can have alcohol.
>> No, we just had fun and drinks.
No, but I actually gave suggestion to integrate gender issues in the next freedom on line coalition which is going to happen in Estonia, yes, freedom on line coalition.
So yeah, we didn't discuss much. It's just that we all women had fun after the Gala dinner.
Yeah.
.
>> I think it's really good, there's so many more people. I have been involved since the first IGF where there were like maybe five people, ten people, and less and less.
There seems to be so much more energy around the gender dynamic coalition, which is really great.
What I see in terms of just what we are looking at here and picking up from what it is as a gender dynamic coalition, what do we really want to achieve
I think that needs to be maybe discussed more or articulated more.
Because I think that was the issue or the problem earlier.
It's sort of like there's some vagueness around what it is.
And of course, you know, that doesn't mean it's the only thing that will happen around advocacy on gender and women's rights in IGF. Obviously all of us interested are going to do what we have to do
I see several things being talked about here.
Number one I think is the participation, which continues to be an issue in the sense that we still want to have diversity
I think diversity can be defined in many different ways.
In relation to not just having numbers, but having women, what kinds of people do we want to come to the IGF
I think that is important.
That is where you also find what kind of issues come to the discussion.
If it's only governments and only those kinds of issues.
And that is where I think the discussion around who is relevant to bring, you, et cetera
I think there needs to maybe be some discussion around that.
That is one
I think also the question around decision making. And that is where I see the suggestions coming from Nina where we need to influence the decision making process within IGF, national, regional, global, I think that is one thread and important, decision making around how this whole process of Internet governance happens.
We need to be there and we need to identify where that is.
Think the third area is really the themes. We need to influence the themes around IGF, and in what sense do we want to influence that.
That is I think what are the issues that are really important to us.
Perhaps when we look, there's always similar themes around the IGF every year. You can predict that. The overall theme they will fight about, argue about, and come to some very vague theme.
But in the end you know the issues, you can always relate to.
It's important for us to identify what are the critical, the most critical issues for the gender dynamic coalition.
Maybe in terms of framework and principles
I had a fourth thing. It will come to me.
The fourth thing is, that is the third, right?
The fourth is the media, the publicness of the advocacy.
Maybe there could be some discussion around that, what is it that we want to come out publicly to influence the public discourse in relation to gender rights, feminists within the process.
>> It's linked exactly to what Chet said and I think we should go with that framing that Chet offered
I think that I have heard countless initiatives of mapping, of maybe it's Internet rights. Nuances, right?
In Latin America there's a huge Internet rights and actors mapping going on. I'm sure that is being carried out by many different people involved in these areas.
It probably has no gender component from the get‑go.
It might have a gender desegregated data.
We might not be able to influence that.
But there are these initiatives happening.
Been able to influence all those different researchers or knowing that research is looking at gender and try and follow up and get it back will be great for the next IGF but it's not something we all have a capacity of.
We can do a lot of mapping and a lot of things but we need to be realistic about our capabilities, focusing on the goals.
When I think back, I also think the same with the other spaces. We cannot spend our lives in meetings. Many of us find that frustrating and nonproductive at times.
There are so many spaces where these issues are getting slightly addressed.
It takes a lot of energy because we are so few people working. For example, gender and broadband.
The people moving that aren't necessarily here, although it would be great.
Or maybe they are here and we're not in their sessions.
So just trying to understand that we have a vague idea or very precise idea of different mapping, but how can we concentrate you're energies.
Going back to that, something I think was fantastic was the gender round table.
It looked at many themes and happened earlier on.
How can we get those things being mentioned in an excellent gender round table into people's minds hearts and thinking processes as they are in this space and beyond.
That to me was good, something that was done.
For me another bottom line also achieved at this IGF was the presence of local women's opinions around Internet governance and making sure that voice was prominent.
We're in their country.
So yay!
I like that too.
To me these are like two bottom lines for us.
At the very minimal level.
So to what chat was saying about decision making, themes, a public space for advocacy, and maybe supporting Indonesia women's voice to make that as public as possible, and making sure also when we leave it's not a voice that was made public and vulnerable in each country that we go to.
Those to me are the things that we can minimally do.
Keeping in mind the minimum, going with Chat's frame, how can we move forward.
>> Thank you.
Actually do want to end this conversation by really looking at what do we want to do as a dynamic coalition.
Bearing in mind it's a dynamic coalition that comes together once a year, not always the same people. Because different people go to different IGF depending where it's being held
What can we do as a remote dynamic coalition, a lot of activities have been through a mailing list that only gets quite active during workshops at mission time, then a lull and just before IGF, during IGF, then a lull again.
So really what do we want to do as a dynamic coalition that is achievable, that is targeted, that has some form of impact.
That is why we started with the report card.
This is something we did, and the gender round table Erica mentioned is also from last year's round table discussion, gender DC meeting, we said we wanted to do this, and we organized and made it happen.
Is this minimum that we can do together? What else do we want to do
I also want to mention on Erica's point on supporting local women's participation and perspective on advocacy and women's rights in Internet governance, it's so different from Azerbaijan.
Last year there were a lot of women that came but they were not engaged throughout the entire period of time and even when they were they were kind of playing hostess than participants of the space.
It's a marked difference in terms of levels of engagement, participation, raising of issues.
So what do we want to do.
.
>> What I saw from the last gender and Internet governance workshop, lots of issues here.
It's new for me. So I feel like I don't know if you guys have regular meeting, just talk about, or like specific meeting for gender.
Because gender itself is so huge and related to many.
It's not enough for one hour and a half like yesterday, but it was really great meeting because it was my first experience ever. So understand the issue actually, several issues.
So how we want to talk all the gender issues.
>> Okay, my comment from Kenya, gender, I mean, Internet governance is still equate an agenda, but we have the gender commission but in terms of relating with women's rights groups is really at a high level. Therefore, when we come to such a forum, you will find that the Internet governance is actually is the women at that top level.
It has not trickled down.
And we are saying the local women who form the issues of women are yet to be discussed.
Unless we find a forum whereby that local person or local issues is represented in terms of an activity that can actually be looked at like across continents and therefore we can actually say those women can actually come and represent a real gender issue that cuts across continents where women are naturally, the issues of women are actually represented.
Otherwise we shall continue talking about IGF and gender issues at this level, and the women at the local level is really not represented.
Level give an example of yesterday's meeting
I think we went to one of the workshops, and this lady was actually talking about her mother who is 80 years old. Is literal in terms of ICT.
We are all growing at different levels and diversity is such that we cannot discuss at IGF because we are not growing at the same level.
My mother at 80 doesn't know about I.T.
There were we are saying we have to look for issues that really cut across to be able to represent IGF issues at this forum.
>> Very important in terms of the different realities that we bring to this space.
But also to recognize this is one of the many spaces where by Internet and gender issues are discussed.
And how then do we bring this particular issue in terms of like literacy and access back to this space where the policy discussion is being held.
>> We have somebody that is participated remotely from Thailand.
I'll just read what that person writes.
I'm very new to IGF and found remote participation very useful.
Anyway I would suggest that for the next IGF more grassroots women activists or those who cannot afford coming to the meeting should be included more.
Now I can only middle class women were here.
In Thailand I'm sure that middle class women and grassroots women have different challenges when talking about Internet freedom
I would suggest that civil society organization should encourage local women to remotely participate so that we can hear more of their voices in public.
Thank you.
>> How to mobilize more remote participation.
I'm going to sum up some of the action points we have decided on.
Yeah?
We decided yes we will continue the gender report card as monitoring measure.
We would like to see how this can be implemented at national and regional IGF.
There's a committee being set up. One.
Second thing was around trying to assess different IG spaces happening and who are the potential champions within that.
So sharing of, mapping of this and potential people that we can work with and engage with at different stakeholder levels.
That is one.
After we did engage, what we want them to do actually. What is it we want to happen.
Think sometimes we are good at organizing and once we are there, we don't know what is it we want to have a conversation around, rather than demands.
And then I forget.
Crap.
Then there was another small committee that wants to talk about media strategy. Right?
I really like the idea about facilitating more regular discussions on IG issues
I think that is a critical strategy, how do we do this even if we are not at the meeting.
From now until the next IGF, maybe this is something we can try and plan amongst ourselves, who will pick this up, what kinds of issues would you like to host the conversation around, so that we get a better sense of the multiple dimensions, and that is not stuck at women versus men, how many numbers and what group.
Because that is not actually very helpful, as Dina was saying
I like Chat's framing of what is it, where is it, okay.
The four things.
In terms of what we want to do as dynamic coalition focusing around participation, what kinds of participation, decision making, influencing processes within IGF, influencing thematic areas and working with media.
What we want to do with all these three separate areas.
We don't have time to talk through it now.
Is there something you really want to talk about now before we end.
Because we will never have this again.
Just to let you know.
I mean of course we will have this again but in different ways.
Not exactly the same people.
Like this is an opportunity to really talk to exactly us now.
What would you like to finally finally talk about. No one from APC.
.
Hello, my name is Andy from Indonesia.
First issue is about language barriers.
This is very important for us.
If you mention local women should be represented here, I say that I would like to highlight it that we have to have the translator or interpreter in each not only main station but like this station.
Because we are, this forum is like one of our capacity building. For example, because for us in Indonesia, yes, languages is one of our challenges in gender too.
This is very important
I would like the raise this main issue.
Second one is about the academics
I never heard about any academics who would involve more in the IGF and including the gender issue.
If you mention about the involvement of the government, how about the academics itself.
>> (Off microphone).
>> Exactly. Thank you very much.
>> The issue of language and accessibility as well as engaging with others, not forgetting other stakeholders like members in academia and in the technical community.
>> My name is Randy. I come from private sector and represent a few groups.
>> Yay.
>> Yeah. It's kind of a dilemma, kind of contradicting between women's rights, human rights, and businesses.
But this is where I am now.
I don't know much about women's rights, to be honest. I don't know much about human rights. I'm very new to this.
However, from a business perspective, private sector perspective, especially Indonesia where this country is almost half and half male and female, we believe if we develop more and more, not necessarily injecting women into the board room or into parliament, because it's all going to be about numbers.
What we're asking is what can they do once you are sitting in that position.
In Indonesia shg with the parliament, government or board room, about 11, 12, 13 percent women sitting in those chairs.
Still one of the highest around the countries.
However, not enough.
We're starting to not do studies but research within the groups of companies, looking into projects after project, why are women more successful, where are they projecting more not necessarily value but more money.
Remember, I come from private sector, come from business, so we're starting to question, what happens to you guys, what is wrong. You guys are screwing it up to be honest, how come they are producing more and more.
We're start to go raise the question, how can we develop them to produce more money for these companies.
This is from a private sector point of view.
But from a human rights point of view, from women's rights, and I agree with you, we all have to remember especially Indonesia, it can't be just about the numbers because you will battle a tough fight.
You have to develop.
Maybe I misunderstood you, but most of us when it comes to human rights or women's rights, maybe I'm wrong, but let's not, let's make sure it's not just about, make sure what we are hearing is not just about having women into the board room. Make sure what we are hearing is how can we develop them from a young age, before they geo that seat.
And remember this is coming from private sector point of view.
I'm very new, so we are studying this, looking into this. We're are looking how key with help as far as women's rights and human rights.
>> Thank you.
>> Cool, the role of private sector
I think by being here maybe we can help to sort of reframe some of the understanding around how to think about the issues and different roles in it
I think this helps, just being part of the conversation and being here, is kind of a beginning process, but where to take it from here onwards.
Timing is a little short, we are almost at the end, so to very quickly have as many as possible then close.
>> (Speaking through translator ).
My name is Farid, I'm from the LGBT groups in Indonesia and feel very lucky because I'm involved here.
One of my problems is that I really have struggled in the language.
I feel so lucky also because our other colleagues helping me to translate and to interpret the language itself, and I will bring all of the information and knowledge here back to my home.
.
.
It will be very different when the local womens or the victims who got violence itself will be voice their experience, compare other people who do not have any experience on that.
So to say that a lot of victims got violence in the social media.
.
One of the struggles that we face, this is kind of media like access and challenge like this is very rare for us.
And this is a very good and important capacity building for us. So it's very important to us too.
Thank you.
>> I also want to say, you say about champions, our focal point in every country.
So think about also the security of the local person.
Because like LGBT, we discuss a lot how we want to say something about LGBT on Internet and block and everything and how is the impact and how we protest a private sector association and how is the impact.
Think about also strategy about security for the local focal point.
>> Thank you.
So I think we have quite a lot to move on from here.
Thank you very much for your participation.
What we do usually is have a gender coalition mailing list. Where a lot of conversations happen after this space.
If you are not on the list, give me your e‑mail address and we will add you to the list. It's currently being run by APC.
Anyone interested to be part of the core coordinating team of the gender dynamic coalition coalition, there's opportunities to organize things more concretely. If there's something you would like to do, then please also feel free to say something.
Any other final comments in terms of what we should be doing as a dynamic coalition.
.
>> Resource is what we need. Resources and samples of success stories, champions, data, all that. That is crucial for us from the private sector.
>> So sharing of success stories and data and so on to also help to be able to mobilize resources for more participation and more capacity building.
That is good.
Any other final comments about what we should be doing as a coalition, other thoughts, questions, niggling things, Betsy.
>> Quickly I want to mention that the U.S. government does support a lot of local activists to come to the IGF every year
I think there could be more peer pressure from folks from this coalition to their governments to help remind them of their responsibility to help incorporate those voices.
Also we do help do our own peer pressure within the government types to try to make sure that happens as well.
That is definitely a huge priority for us.
>> To insert pressure where necessary to support local participation.
>> Very practical.
And picking up on the suggestions, one is not sure if the IGF orientation that is new, the 8‑9 meeting, if there's any intervention there that we could make use of around these are the gender issues we're looking at, sort of part of like the briefing for delegates or representatives.
That is one very practical.
Number two, I think this is a question coming from Camille earlier because it's very short, the round table. No? But that is we still need that, I think, because then you have everyone together.
But there are preevents as well. So another way, I know there's ton of pre‑events, but that is one thing to think about too, if you want like a one‑day pre‑event just to deepen discussions around agenda the day before.
>> I'm also not sure what people who are participating here think about the world summit On the Information Society, our grandmother, how will be participating there. It's certainly a space for deepening the aspects of debate on gender and Internet governance issues.
We should be thinking towards that as well.
>> If there's nothing else, I guess we will call the meeting to an end.
Don't forget to pass e‑mail addresses so we will continue after today.
Thank you.
(Cheers).
.
(Session ended at 12:35).