Latest action

How do images and representation of women and men affect violence against women? Yesterday, we invited you to explore the spaces you occupy and move around daily with your camera, questions and a critical eye. Today, make the connections between what you experienced and saw with the incidences of violence against women that take place where you are.

Join the dots. Draw connections between images and representation, the dissemination of gendered norms and values and how they impact on the reality of violence against women. Make a slideshow documentary.

1. What's the reality?

• Check out this week's newspapers and look for reports on violence against women.
• Take pictures of the newspaper reports and add them to your image folder from yesterday.
• If the news reports are online, take a printscreen

2. Converse and connect

• Compare the photos you took yesterday with the news reports you collected today.
• What links can you make between your photos depicting gender stereotypes and the news reports on violence?
• Think about some gendered norms and ideas that facilitate and perpetuate violence against women:
  • Rigid and fixed ideas of gender roles
  • Physical harm and punishment towards women and girls as acceptable
  • Ideas of what it means to be a "man" including aggression, dominance, ownership and control over women and girls
  • Ideas of what it means to be a "woman" including sexualisation, submission, availability and servility towards men and boys.
  • Sexualisation of violence against women
  • Women as being economically dependent, and men as controllers of wealth and decision-making
• Alternatively, are there images that challenge and counter the norms above?
• Check out some resources online with ideas and suggestions on how to analyse and read gendered representation of images such as GenderAds.

3. Powerful images tell us powerful stories

• Create a slide show from the two sets of images and put them together so they become a dialogue or conversation
• You can use programmes like Open Office, Powerpoint or Keynote to create your slide show. Or save all your images as pdf files.
• Ground them with your thoughts, statistics, quotes or stories that you have heard of or experienced.
• When you are done, upload your presentation on Slide Share – an online service that allows you to upload 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.
• 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.

4. Document collectively

• Copy and paste the link of your slideshow as a comment on this page.
• Or you can create an account on this site, and upload your slideshow directly.
• Create an account
• Log in
• Click on "create content", then "video"
• Type in the title of your slideshow, select the issues it addresses, and include the location of the images in the slideshow.
• Scroll down and select today's action under "Daily action" reference
• Under "Description", click on "source" and copy and paste the embed code onto the body. You can also add a brief description of your action after the embed code.
• Click "save" and you're done.
• Continue mapping and contesting the images and messages that you encounter. Start a blog, a mailing list or Facebook group as a project with friends. Or join existing initiatives such as "the society pages" or "Say NO to advertisers who use images of violence against women"

Make the connections visible. Document and disrupt the everyday stories of gender roles and values that contribute to violence against women. Change the message!