The last day of Take Back The Tech! falls on International Human Rights Day. This acts as an important reminder that the many forms of violence against women violate our most fundamental human rights.

In 1993 the United Nations recognised violence against women as a critical human rights issue that compels State commitment and intervention - only 16 years ago.

How far have we advanced in the fight to end violence against women?

How have developments in information and communications technologies strengthened the efforts to end violence against women? How has it enabled violence against women to happen?

Communication rights - including access to information, right to privacy, freedom of expression and opinion and the right to form communities - are fundamental in efforts to address violence against women. For the past 16 days, we have documented realities, exchanged strategies, told stories, explored analysis, disseminated information and come together as a network of campaigners and activists in the fight to end violence against women.

Take Back The Tech! is about exercising our rights and capacity to take control, shape and define communication frameworks, technologies and platforms. We understand this as critical to transform our spaces - both offline and online - into spaces that are free from violence against women.

At the same time, it is challenging to make the link between violence against women and information and communication technologies as human rights issues. Often, ICTs are seen just as a tool instead of a critical agenda for the advancement of women's rights and human rights. Policies, laws and development plans on emerging ICTs rarely take into account the reality of violence against women in its creation and implementation. Similarly, policies and laws on violence against women rarely take into account the dimensions of emerging ICTs.

We are only just beginning to document and analyse the complex and changing interconnection between both areas.

Help join the dots. Show the reality of violence against women where you are, and connect it with the need to Take Back The Tech! 

16 slides x 16 seconds

  • Adapt the Pecha-Kucha presentation format to narrate your picture. Pecha-Kucha was originally designed for architects and other creative people who also often struggle with finding the right words to share their passion and showcase complex productions.
  • The idea is simple. Show 16 images that tell the story of the reality of violence against women where you are, and how it connects with communication rights and ICTs. Each slide is shown for 16 seconds (the original Pecha-Kucha format is 20 x 20 - we've adapted it to 16 for the 16 days of activism).

Your action:

  • Grow our story by adding images that speaks to your reality on violence against women and ICTs
  • Ground the story with your narrative - add subtitle, comments, audio or music
  • Create your own 16 x 16 story and share it! 
  • Start a conversation and take it offline.

1. Grow stories with your reality. Start a conversation.

  • Here's a slideshow we have come up with.
  • Grow it with imagery that reflects your reality. Email us the images and we'll add it in.

2. Powerful images tell powerful stories

  • Choose images that tells the story of violence against women and its connection with ICTs.
  • Images can be made of a phrase, a quotation, something you draw, photographs of the streets you walk in, a print screen of statistics, a collage made from magazines and newspaper clippings, comic strips, a snapshot of a piece of legislation, digital postcards - anything you feel is part of the story.
  • If you are stuck for thoughts, you can use the series of papers that provide a baseline on the policy on ICTs and VAW in 12 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America on genderIT.org.
  • Do a search for images on the internet, especially image libraries that allow sharing like Flickr and Creative Commons.
  • Create tag clouds using Wordle.
  • Make a comic strip and get a witty conversation going.
  • Save print screens.
  • Use any imagery on this website, like digital postcards.
  • Be creative, provocative and have fun!

3. Ground the story with your narrative. Start a conversation

  • Ground the 16 x 16 stories with your narrative and add your thoughts to the images.
  • Add a narrative to each slide by inserting a comment according to the number of the slide.
  • Or add voice or music to the slideshow.
  • You can use a service like Vocaroo to record your voice as you view the slideshow, and email the audio to us.
  • Or use a service like Postcard.FM to send the image with the audio integrated, and we'll add it to our slide show.

4. Create your slide show

  • Create your own 16 x 16 slide show that tells the story of violence against women and ICTs where you are.
  • Create a slide show using Open Office, Powerpoint or Keynote. Or you can save all your images to pdf files.
  • Upload your presentation on Slide Share - a web browser application that allows you to create slide shows and share them with others.
    • Once you have registered and verified your account, login, select "upload".
    • Browse and upload your Presentation, Powerpoint or Keynote file (or images as individual pdf files).
    • You can add a narrative to each slide under "Description", or leave it blank.
    • Or you can use Vocaroo to record audio and create a slidecast.
    • Select whichever category you think most applicable.
    • Under "privacy", select "public" so we can embed it on this site.
    • Then click "publish" and you're done!
  • If you don't want to create an account on Slide Share, email us and we will send you the login details of the Take Back The Tech! shared account.
  • Or simply email the presentation to us and we will upload and share it on the site for you.

5. Share it

  • Copy and paste the link of your slideshow as a comment on this page. Click on the title of today's action and scroll down.
  • Or you can create an account on this site, and upload your slideshow, audio file, or image directly.
  • Login, click on "create content", then "media". In the "body" section, click "source" and copy and paste the embed code. 

6. Take it offline

  • Organise a Take Back The Tech! 16 x 16 Pecha-Kucha gathering, and invite others to showcase their story using the same format.
  • Start a discussion going on the how violence against women and ICT connect where you are.
  • This can be a great action for International Women's Day on March 8 next year, or as preparation for input to the Beijing + 15 review process.
  • Snap some pictures, take a video, document, blog and share your action.

Take Back The Tech! Make the connection. Draw the story of how violence against women and ICTs link in your spaces. Have fun :)

audio, video & images
Issue
Building knowledge