Photo by Jennifer Ojman on Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/photos/a-group-of-people-standing-on-top-of-a-stag…]
Thirty years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, this GenderIT edition reflects on its legacy and asks how feminist movements can shape the future of gender equality in today’s digital age. Across diverse contexts, the articles highlights gaps, celebrate resilience, and call for reimagining of a gender-just future.
From East Africa, we hear how LGBTQIA+ and marginalised women continue to be sidelined by punitive laws, digital exclusion, and a cis-heteronormative global agenda, even as grassroots groups create safer online spaces. In Mesoamerica, women human rights defenders reveal how digital attacks and state repression, amplified by big tech’s profit models, make defending bodies and land ever more dangerous. Stories from Beijing+30 spaces highlight generational tensions, capitalism’s co-optation of feminism, and the urgent need to reclaim solidarity and radical imagination.
APC’s history points at three decades of feminist internet-building, while reflections on CSW69 spotlight how digital divides, TFGBV, AI, and surveillance demand updated feminist frameworks. In the end, a call to align Beijing+30, WSIS+20, and the Global Digital Compact emphasises that siloed processes risk failure, and only integrated, rights-based approaches rooted in intersectionality, along with Global South leadership can deliver a just digital future.
This edition envisions feminist futures that honour past struggles while addressing current urgent realities.