The Bill was drafted by Justice Alliance of South Africa (JASA), an anti-gay, anti-choice organisation. The countries mentioned by JASA as having enacted similar legislation to the proposal Bill – Yemen and the United Arab Emirates – both censor LGBT as well as political content that they deem undesirable.

Taking into consideration the social context within which laws operate in South Africa, where violence against lesbian women and transgender people is common, “a law focusing on sexual content is likely to see content that focuses on lesbian sexuality or even women’s sexuality as deviant and undesirable” says Shackleton.

“The Law Reform Commission in South Africa, tasked with investigating internet pornography should consider freeing up funds from the Universal Access Fund to promote positive content by women and for women,” says Shackleton. “That way we tip the balance of content in favour of more positive representations of women and more diversity.”

“The Law Reform Commission’s investigation at the very least must be framed by considering that children and women are not the same entity. Children are a separate category of people that require very different legislative approaches than those addressing women,” Shackleton concludes.

Shikoh Gitau, a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science, has bagged the prestigious Google Anita Borg Memorial Award for 2010, the first recipient from sub-Saharan Africa.

The award is given to female students who show exceptional academic and leadership skills in computing and technology. The award carries a cash prize and a visit to Google’s Engineering Centre in Zurich for a networking retreat.

From June 7 – 11, South Asian APC member Bytes for All will unite fellow APC members and women activists alike for a joint event, funded by the APC’s Member Exchange Fund. Representatives from several APC organisations will meet in Islamabad to attend a workshop on digital storytelling and learn how to Take Back the Tech! to end violence against women. This Feminist Tech Exchange will unite 12 – 15 activist women so they can be trained to further train others in the Asian region.

Aramanzan Madanda, at a recent seminar on the interconnections of violence against women and ICTs in Uganda, noted that divulging “personal details on social networking sites such as Facebook .. compromises privacy and possibly security.” Research connected to the MDG3 Project: Take Back the Tech! to end violence against women found “that spouses often used mobile phones to monitor their spouses all the time. They expect the spouses…to answer calls instantly.

In India, especially rural India, it’s no secret that inequalities between men and women and between castes are deep. Strong traditional and cultural values dictate who has the power, and while government attempts to include gender on the official agenda in traditional sectors like health and education, including gender considerations into rural e-governance in India’s poorest state, Chhattisgarh, has been a challenge for Dr.

For four days from March 31, fifteen women gathered at the Feminist Tech Exchange in the Brazzaville (Congo) Digital Campus. Participants and trainers alike came from human and women’s rights organisations, the media and politics to learn more about how to use technology to end violence against women and girls. APC member Azur Développement was involved in putting on the event which talked about the hows and whys of blogging, using video, audio and mobile phones, as well as social networking. The FTX is a part of the APC’s Take Back the Tech!

Over the last decade, the internet has been censored and content regulated and the principal reason cited by governments across all geopolitical spectrums has been sex – or “harmful sexual content”. But online sexual content ranges from information on sexual health to fighting sexual violence and can also be very important to people’s right to freedom of expression and right to information.

This APC media brief examines regulation and censorship of sexual content as part of APC WNSP’s Exploratory Research on Internet and Sexuality (EroTICs) on how different people in different parts of the world are really using the internet related to sex. Results will be published at the end of 2010 but initial findings are now online
The EroTICs research is being carried out with support from the Ford Foundation.