What can Internet Shutdowns Tell us About Gender and International Security?

Abstract

Internet shutdowns are politically-orchestrated critical infrastructure failures that come with a long list of negative effects on local communities. Women are more likely to be targeted with sexual violence and other forms of political disenfranchisement. Activists lose the ability to broadcast human rights violations to a transnational audience. Moreover, Internet shutdowns have cost the global economy over $26 billion dollars since 2019. Digital Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) come with a list of promises designed to correct gender inequality. ICTs facilitate political mobilization, freedom of expression, remittances between diaspora communities, increase productivity and earnings between men and women, and release women's time from care and housework so that they can participate in markets. For these reasons, ICT infrastructure development has been central to the women's equality agenda even as governments try to reconcile the tension between ICTs as tools that both enable political expression and perpetuate gendered harassment and violence. However, Internet shutdowns create the conditions for the backsliding of women's equality. Several United Nations (UN) member states have highlighted critical infrastructure protection as central to their national cybersecurity strategies. Critical infrastructure is often spoken of in terms of technical and computational vulnerabilities, which are a remnant from traditional security policy that conceptualized insecurity as a threat to state sovereignty. Yet, if critical infrastructure protection is necessary for social well-being, then it follows that ICT failures will also have negative social consequences. This chapter provides an overview on the gendered consequences of Internet shutdowns and the relationship between gender, digital ICTs, and international security.