IT For Change: Research Brief (2013)
This paper sets out to study how gender equality gets constructed within the discursive space of IGF, using IGF 2012 as an exemplar. It utilises a Critical Discourse Analysis Framework that draws upon the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development’s framework which defines gender equality as comprising the following domains: capabilities and access to resources and opportunities; empowerment; and enabling macro-environmental factors. The paper demonstrates that in the new global order being shaped by a rising network capitalism, the discourse of gender in the spaces of technology policy such as IGF, is reduced to a depoliticised product. This is because the new ‘multi-stakeholder’ model of governance that is endorsed in these spaces, does not really generate valencies about the governance of the Internet and emergent digital technologies, as a set of public policy principles.
Download the research brief here.