Why we need a ‘feminist digital economics’

This blog draws on discussions with Jac Kee, Patricia Peña, Safia Khan, Ruth Nyambura, and Jinnie Chae at a session on the digital economy at a recent APC/IDRC workshop on Mapping the research landscape of gender and digital technology in Malaysia. We realised that we needed to build a feminist digital economics; that looks at the impact of the digital economy through a feminist lens. This includes a whole range of issues; from the infrastructure of the internet, what we’re doing online that might not think of as work, to the ecological impacts of internet use and fresh perspectives on women’s tech entrepreneurship. This short piece cannot do justice to the incredibly rich discussions and insights from this meeting, but instead aims to capture some of the themes as starting points for exploration.