About

This project is a set of work-in-progress guidelines for feminist tech policy-making and technology creation. The guidelines consist of 12 principles for feminist technology, which range from the intrapersonal to the global, and which are accompanied by a card deck and six essays envisioning more just technological futures.

This project is created by Superrr Lab and contributors of the Superrr Community. Superrr Lab develops visions and projects with the goal of creating more equitable futures. We research technologies, build networks and shape new narratives. Superrr is playful, visionary and feminist.

»We are committed to interrogating the capitalist logic that drives technology towards further privatization, profit, and corporate control. We work to create alternative forms of economic power that are grounded in principles of cooperation, solidarity, commons, environmental sustainability and openness.« — Feminist Internet

Contemporary digitisation narratives are economic in nature and serve the interests of corporations over the needs of societies and minorities. By contrast, feminist tech policy takes a holistic view of digitisation, to look at it in terms of intersectional patterns of discrimination. By taking a feminist approach we are able to think and see beyond existing stories and structures. We question current innovation narratives and examine the value of maintenance, accessibility, openness and care for the digital societies of the future.

By building up this kind of open digital knowledge archive on feministtech.org as well as the Feminist Tech Principles card deck, we aim to facilitate a long-term exchange on the topics of intersectionality and digitisation. The principles, observations, good practice examples and future visions are intended to guide government institutions, organisations, companies and individuals to envision, plan, and make decisions related to technology. We intend for this project to broaden current discourse and highlight the changes that are needed to ensure that all groups in society benefit equitably from digitisation.

The principles were developed by Superrr Lab (Nushin Yazdani, Julia Kloiber, Elisa Lindinger, Ouassima Laabich-Mansour), in cooperation with Cami Rincón, Carolina Reis, Chenai Chair, Chinmayi SK, Chinmayi SK, Felix Reda, Francesca Schmidt, Helene v. Schwichow, Kat Waters, Katrin Fritsch, Laurence Meyer, Maya Ober, Michelle Thorne, Nakeema Stefflbauer, Naomi Alexander Naidoo, Neema Githere, Nighat Dad, Raziye Buse Çetin, Safa Ghnaim, Sarah Devi Chander, Vanessa A. Opoku, and Victoria Kure-Wu.

This project builds on the work of leading researchers and storytellers such as Joy Buolamwini, Nanjala Nyabola, Sasha Constanza-Chock, Jac sm Kee, Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein, adrienne maree brown, and Ruha Benjamin, projects such as the Oracle for Transfeminist Technologies, and organisations such as Design Justice Network, Indigenous AI, Feminist Internet, Art and Feminism, and the Astrea Foundation that developed the Feminist Funding Principles.

This project is supported by the Robert Bosch Foundation under their Support Program »Reducing Inequalities Through Intersectional Practice«. Thank you to Anna-Dorothea Grass and Rana Zincir Celal for guidance and support.

Thank you to Rainbow Unicorn for their beautiful design & code.

We are standing on the shoulders of giantesses. Our work builds upon the work of many people and groups before us. The principles that we have developed are only a snapshot, created by a particular set of people with particular perspectives, experiences, privileges and marginalisations.

For our contributors and for us, these principles and guidelines have been especially inspirational:

The principles are made for governments, civil society organisations and companies, as well as activists, designers, policymakers, technology creators and other individuals who aim to create more just and equitable technologies, designs and/or tech policies – or who want to discuss and critically assess their practice through these principles.

We hope they help make the world of the digital commons look a little more like this:
»A flourishing digital public space should be welcoming and safe for diverse publics, help us understand and make sense of the world, connect people near and far across divides and hierarchies, enable us to act together.« — The New Public

We are currently exploring how to make working on the principles as accessible as possible. One possible format will be online/offline collective writing and discussion workshops. The principles are open for debate and editing, and we welcome critical and productive feedback.

Soon you’ll be able to help us develop them further by leaving your comments and ideas in our Github repository. If you are interested in sending direct feedback or talking to us about the principles, please write us an email: hello@superrr.net

If you would like to get updates on the process and be invited to future workshops please sign up to this mailing list.

Among many other thinkers, writers, activists and technologists, the Feminist Tech Principles are inspired by Valerie Hannon’s concept of the Four Levels of Thriving, at which education must be rethought so that people can thrive. The levels are: global, societal, interpersonal, and intrapersonal (we use “the self”). In that each level influences the others reciprocally, they are interdependent. We believe this is not only true for education but can be applied to the creation of technology or its regulation.

On the one hand, we want to use this method to examine existing challenges and relate them to each other. On the other we are aiming at an holistic approach towards the contemporary and future creation and regulation of technologies. What shifts follow from thinking through technology creation or policymaking and thier impacts at each of the four levels?

Many of the principles are interdependent and affect more than one level. We have placed each principle at the level upon which we found its impact to be particularly strong.


Image from: Valerie Hannon (2017). Thrive: Schools Reinvented for the Real Challenges We Face. Innovation Unit Press.

The Feminist Tech Framework is supported by the program Reducing Inequalities Through Intersectional Practice of Robert Bosch Stiftung.