Digital
democracy: Women’s
Learning Partnership
helps women make IT
their own
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New
paradigms of
democratic
solidarity are
emerging as a
result of the
advent of the
Internet and
new
information
technologies..
These new
technologies,encompassing
everything from
e-mail to Facebook
to YouTube, are
changing the face
of democracy activism, allowing
more participatory,
dialogue-based
approaches to
cross-border work.
Technology has now
become a major resource
as women in closed
societies strive for
equal rights and more
open political space.
Information and
communication technology
(ICT) has created more
opportunities for women
to express their
opinions, connect and
share experiences with
activists in different
countries, and advocate
for the protection of
human rights. In this
new environment, Women’s
Learning Partnership (WLP),
a NED grantee, has made
the Internet and ICTs a
crucial component of its
work in Africa, the
Middle East, and Central
Asia.
WLP is dedicated to
advancing communication
and cooperation between
women of the world in
order to strengthen
civil society,
specifically in
countries where
women’s access to the
political process has
been limited. WLP trains
women in these
traditionally closed
societies to be leaders
in their communities and
works to advance
women’s involvement in
critical
decisions-making
processes. The
organization also builds
the capacity of their
many partner
organizations that
promote peace building,
women’s rights, and
good governance.
 WLP
creates culture-specific
educational training
materials and provides
computers and other
tools to their partner
organizations. For
example, WLP’s new
path-breaking
publication, Making
IT Our Own,
enables women to use
ICTs in their advocacy
work and will soon be
translated into an
Arabic language edition.
ICTs have become
important tools of women
working for equal rights
in societies in which
women have long been
relegated to bystander
status. Now, ICTs have
enabled women to reach
across borders and
cooperate with their
counterparts in
different countries as
they work to enact
change at home.
Traditional
solidarity campaigns
have been largely based
on the international
community responding to
locally-determined needs
and demands, as in the
case of the
anti-apartheid movement,
noted Mahnaz Afkhami,
President of WLP, at a
panel discussion held at
NED on September 5. But
recent work with Iranian
women’s groups
suggested that local
activists’
perspectives transcend
national borders and
they do not necessarily
consider themselves more
politically insightful
or salient than external
or foreign groups. For
example, the Iranian
women’s 1
Million Signatures
campaign quite
deliberately draws on
the success of Moroccan
women in reforming family
law.
At the NED
discussion, titled “Technology
for Women’s Rights
Advocacy and Democracy
Building,”
women’s activists from
WLP partners in Lebanon,
India, Jordan, and
Afghanistan spoke on the
ways in which ICT has
transformed the nature
of democracy and human
rights activism.
Activists are now
using blogs,
YouTube,
Google
Maps, and other
ICT tools to track
human rights violations,
raise political
awareness, promote civic
education, and gain
access to previously
closed or
“digitally-deprived”
communities. Innovative
and creative uses of IT
can have
“life-changing”
effects, said Sakena
Yacoobi of theAfghan
Institute of Learning
(AIL) . Illiterate,
isolated Afghan women
are initially drawn to
AIL’s Women
Connect ICT Centers
for literacy classes,
but then get drawn into
workshops on democracy,
training and leadership,
opening up new horizons
as well as acquiring new
skills.
Drawing on Making
IT Our Own,
Jordan’s Asma Khader
outlined how Arab
women’s rights
campaigners use on-line
surveys to solicit
information on the
impact of discriminatory
laws. An on-line
Arabic-language
counseling center gives
women advice on legal
and social issues that
has literally saved
lives in some cases,
said Khader, General
Coordinator of Sisterhood is
Global Institute/Jordan
and a former Cabinet
Minister.
New technologies do
not facilitate access to
the “most
disenfranchised or the
poorest of the poor”,
said Beirut-based Lina
Abou Habib, but they
have been especially
effective in attracting
women in rural areas and
youth. New e-courses on
citizenship and civic
activism, available in
Arabic, English, and
Persian, have engaged
thousands of women
activists from Morocco
to Afghanistan, said
Habib, Director of the Collective
for Research and
Training on
Development-Action .
“Information is a
prelude to agency,”
said Rakhee Goyal,
executive director of
Women’s Learning
Partnership and
co-author of Making
IT Our Own. IT is
allowing women to take
ownership of issues,
often on a cross-border
basis.
In most Arab states,
women are denied the
legal right to confer
nationality on their
spouses and children.
WLP has worked to
support the Claiming
Equal Citizenship
campaign , organized by
a coalition of Arab
women’s groups, which
has successfully used IT
to develop a regional
dimension and employ a
range of strategies to
secure women’s right
to nationality,
including in-depth
comparative research,
communications to raise
public awareness of the
issues, and building
cross-border alliances
between NGOs. In
Algeria, the law was
changed to allow women
to confer nationality on
their spouses and
children, and in Egypt,
women may now confer
their nationality on
their children.
In the past year, WLP
partners conducted
leadership, ICT, and
training-of-trainer
workshops and institutes
for over 1,300
grassroots women
activists in Egypt,
Jordan, Morocco,
Bahrain, Lebanon,
Mauritania, Palestine,
Afghanistan, Nigeria,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Turkey, and Malaysia.
The workshops provided
communication, advocacy,
and networking skills to
its participants. In
2009 WLP will continue
to hold training
workshops, upgrade its
IT training centers in
the Middle East, and
translate several
publications and
training manuals into
Urdu, Arabic, and
Persian. WLP will also
support its partners’
regional campaign on
women’s citizenship
rights in Algeria,
Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan,
Lebanon, and Morocco.
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