A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action: Mobilising for Feminist Tech Industry Standards
RightsCon, Lusaka Zambia, Main Venue, RoomA101 & Online May 7, 10:15-11:15 Zambia Local Time (SAST)
Safety by design is increasingly promoted as a corporate responsibility standard, and is emerging as a central debate in setting tech industry standards, but what does it really mean when defined by those most impacted by digital harm? Too often, safety by design is framed as a checklist for risk management rather than a transformative commitment to justice, equality, and accountability, and rights. Current models privilege corporate interests and global north regulatory contexts, leaving behind women, girls, and marginalised communities in the Global South who experience disproportionate tech-facilitated gender-based violence. This session asks: What if safety by design were defined through feminist principles and human rights obligations rather than corporate compliance?Speakers will explore: – How business models and design choices exacerbate systemic inequalities and harm. – The gaps between existing legal duties of care, corporate due diligence, and the lived realities of users. – What feminist, rights-based safety by design looks like in practice, including stronger transparency, survivor-centered human rights impact assessments, alignment with global tech industry standards, and corporate accountability in international human rights law. – Systemic and design-level reforms, shaping algorithms, policies, and industry practices to reduce risks and prevent harms at the source proactively.
We want to learn from the participants how activists, technologists, and policy makers across regions are already experimenting with “safety by design” in practice and what barriers they face when engaging platforms or regulators. We want perspectives on how corporate due diligence, human rights impact assessments, and business models can be reshaped to center survivor experiences and feminist principles, and how these approaches could be translated into clear, enforceable tech industry standards. We also want participants to share concrete examples of community-led or rights-based approaches to digital safety that could inform corporate accountability frameworks, industrywide benchmarks, and advocacy priorities. Finally, we want to surface ideas for cross-movement collaboration between feminist groups, human rights defenders, workers’ rights advocates, and consumer protection networks, which can strengthen a joint advocacy campaign for adopting and implementing global safety by design standards and policies. Organized by:
