We can do it: be woman

What is being a woman? What can we really do? To understand how these questions relate to internet governance and women, it is necessary to understand how social advances have grown, and which have allowed women to recognize themselves as a social being and active in government, without being often faced with abusive patterns.

A woman’s place? A woman’s place is wherever she wants it to be

To be a woman is to belong to the feminine gender? The idea of gender that will be exposed here in this text proves that it is not. Considering gender as performance, in which Judith Butler in her work Gender Trouble, has a constructed and imperative concept that is naturalized in repetitions of social customs creating the formation of boxes of patterns, gender is the repetition in which society believes to be ‘right’.

In many social spheres women have their intellects frequently questioned, their attitudes are forced into having a “ladylike” or an expected behavior, their access is restricted to places where their presence is acceptable, many times they have to act differently to be accepted,the low rates of women’s participation in politics is one of the consequences of this scenario.

The big question is, if the woman is forced to behave in a specific environment, how to transgress and occupy the renegade spaces? To answer the above question, understand that it is not enough to know what oppression is and to avoid obeying what you are obliged to do, you have to act. Act by creating dialogues and making new ideas attractive to the ears of those who also want to act for change.

The woman performance on internet

The internet. A networked computer creates communications. It is immediately thought that women can insert their needs into the digital environment. They create feminist networks, debate supreme court decisions in forums, exchange messages from high-tech encrypted applications, use app for locomotion, applications for relationships, but who regulates the terms and conditions of use of these resources?

In all the services shown above, and used by women daily, their perfomances are filtered. Filtering means transforming under the logic of the data industry. Then one sees what is useful or not to the market. What would be a fruitful environment for debate represents at the same time a new threat to diversity, creating new standards of accessibility and exposing women to analyzes when they were not aware of this process.

An example of this are the apps that work with women’s physiological issues, such as: headaches, stress peaks, fertile period, etc. Once again we see the question of the performance of gender from the point of view of sex. The data attribute the female bodies, which become an information product. The question then return: What tool can women use to excite the consciousness of other women?

Emancipatory dialogue – governance by women

The way is the governance, the tool is emancipatory dialogue. First, let’s understand what governance is. From the thinking of James Rosenau, governance is more extensive than government because it uses informal mechanisms, allowing people and organizations, in their area, satisfy your need and respond to your demands.

Therefore, many women in constant dialogue, by allowing themselves to know their needs, present themselves as the necessary change. Take up space, reach out to other women who wait for a leadership model, empower them to be leaders and owners of their own voices.

This is the answer that some researches have presented, as in the study conducted by Kasperky Lab’s entitled Beyond 11 Percent: A Study into Why Women Are Not Entering Cybersecurity, it has been found that only 11% of the Cybersecurity industry is made up of women. This is an example that reinforces the idea of per-defined places for women. In this survey, several women were questioned about what they thought was necessary for a greater engagement of women in this area, 42% agreed that the presence of women would contribute to a greater interest in activities in the mentioned area.

Although momentarily it does not seem possible, in avoiding some of the inherent immediacy of those who seek tangible solutions, it is initiatives of an interpersonal dimension, through conversations with the women of the families, with the friends and in the famous couch activism that the transformation takes place.

And with an invitation, we want to hear from women who crave and are #WomenInGovernance: How do you take part in governance?

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Institute for Research on Internet and Society.