[IGFmaglist] BPF on Gender

[Jac sm Kee]

Dear Lynne, MAG colleagues, and the IGF Secretariat

For the past two years, the BPF Gender has been investigating several
challenges that impact women and girls’ ability to access, engage with,
benefit from, and participate in the development of and decision-making
on the Internet. Like other intersessional initiatives, the BPF Gender
has functioned in a bottom-up, multistakeholder, and community-driven
manner to gather stories, experiences, and lessons.

In 2015, the BPF Gender published a comprehensive outcome report on
online abuse and gender-based violence, which was subsequently
summarised as a Recommendations Roadmap for stakeholders. Building on
this work, the BPF then investigated other barriers that impact women
and girls’ ability to access and benefit from Internet use, culminating
in its 2016 outcome resource.

The BPF Gender’s work has reinforced the fact that gender disparities,
inequalities and discrimination have significant consequences for
thinking through policy and governance issues related to the Internet,
including gender digital divides to and on the Internet, the
intersection between SDGs and the Internet, and more.

**It is for this reason that we would like to reiterate the importance
of gender as a recurring BPF theme every year to ensure that the
integration of gender continues to grow and strengthen within the IGF’s
work.**

In particular, due to the cross-cutting and integral characteristic of
gender, this would enable the BPF to become a valuable platform to
deepen analysis, bring together diverse stakeholder groups, and collect
best practices on specific and emerging aspects in Internet policy and
governance issues. We have seen, for instance, how the work of the 2015
BPF on gender that focused on countering online abuse and gender-based
violence contributed to the work of the 2016 BPF thematic focus on
gender and meaningful access to the Internet.

We propose that the BPF Gender and MAG community should decide what
gender-related topic there is a pressing need to focus its work on each
year, including whether to continue deepening the previous year’s work,
and/or to address something emerging that is different (albeit still
related to gender).

For 2017, we recommend that the BPF Gender should:
:: continue building on its work on access, in parallel with the IGF’s
Policy Options for Connecting and Enabling the Next Billion(s), with a
:: focus on identifying initiatives that address particular barriers
already identified, and surfacing best practices in this area. We will
again make submissions to other intersessional activities as and when it
can add value;
:: continue collaborating with UN Women and the ITU on its EQUALS
partnership, to which our BPF community already made contributions in 2016;
:: again engage with national and regional IGF initiatives to gather
stories and experiences at more local, national and/or regional levels.
In 2016, we organized incredibly useful and inspiring events at the
Brazil IGF, LAC IGF, and APrIGF, for instance;
:: In 2016, we were fortunate to have volunteers and partners who helped
us translate our work into formats that were more engaging to a wider
audience, including in infographic format and on an interactive map. We
propose to continuously engage with partners to ensure that our outputs
are relevant and usable to as broad an audience as possible; and
we will also continue to use different platforms and methods (e.g. our
surveys, case studies, webinars, and in-person meetings in 2016) for
engagement in order to promote broader stakeholder input at different
stages of our processes.

And finally, we would also like to express our deep appreciation for the
support from the IGF Secretariat in the work of this BPF, and would like
to extend to this to all members of the Secretariat that we have had the
privilege of working with. To also note our thanks to Anri van der Spuy,
for her excellent support for the 2015 & 2016 BPF on Gender work. We
look forward to further work with the Secretariat, the MAG and IGF
community this year.

As always, we look forward to receiving the MAG’s valuable input on this
process and suggestions.

Kind regards,

Jac SM Kee (BPF Gender facilitator 2015 & 2016)
Renata Aquino Ribeiro (BPF Gender facilitator 2016)





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Jac sm Kee
Manager, Women's Rights Programme
Association for Progressive Communications
www.apc.org | www.takebackthetech.net | erotics.apc.org
Jitsi: jacsmk | Skype: jacsmk | Twitter: @jhybe


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