Accelerating efforts to tackle online and technology facilitated violence against women and girls (VAWG)

A study conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit states that 38 per cent of women have themselves experienced online violence while 85 per cent have witnessed digital violence against other women.

This report states that online predatory behaviour has been on the rise after covid-19 pandemic, which accelerated the use of online technology.

Most of the girls in a global survey reported that their first experience of social media harassment happened between the ages of 14 and 16 years.

Women political leaders, journalists, activists, and women of intersecting identities are those with the heightened risk of experiencing online violence. Such behaviour pushes women to stop using the internet and other facets of technology, i.e., it creates a ‘chilling effect’ as women’s voices are “silenced, discredited and censored”.

Patriarchal control over women’s bodies, male authority and entitlement and rampant trivializing of violence ensures that such violence against girls and women persists, the report states. 

Defining VAGW comprehensively would allow stakeholders to know what they are tackling. To stop predatory behaviour online, governments must amend existing definitions and laws on violence to accommodate its prevalence online. According to this report, Australia and Mexico have been implemented laws to prevent online VAWG. The impact of such laws is gradual, but definite.

Focus and factoids by Manas Pimpalkhare.

PARI Library’s health archive project is part of an initiative supported by the Azim Premji University to develop a free-access repository of health-related reports relevant to rural India.