This article written by Sudeshna Mukherjee and Ayça Atabey, discusses the increasing involvement of women activists in addressing technology-facilitated gender-based violence, highlighting initiatives aimed at raising awareness, providing support, and advocating for policy changes.
Sudeshna Mukherjee and Ayça Atabey / TechPolicy Press
Digital media and the internet have introduced people to new ways to learn, game, socialize, and even engage in intimacy. On the one hand, technology and the online world can bolster gender equality, including by empowering female public figures such as journalists, politicians, human rights defenders, and feminists across the globe. On the other hand, the digital revolution creates significant risks, including online abuse against women and girls, worsening already existing deeply rooted gender biases, especially in crises and conflict settings.
The Truth Gap, a 2021 report by Plan International surveying 26,000 girls and young women in 26 countries, found that misinformation and disinformation negatively impacted 87% of respondents, restricting girls’ activism. Notably, one in four girls felt less confident about sharing their views online. The negative effects of online threats have wide impacts relating to women and girls’ psychological and mental health, surveillance and privacy. They undermine efforts to incorporate digital security considerations in feminist agendas, rights to data protection and privacy, freedom of assembly or participation in the public sphere, and non-discrimination, among many others.
Select cases of technology-facilitated violence impacting feminists
The nexus of technology, gender, and violence is strong. 85% of women worldwide witnessed online violence against other women, per the Economist Intelligence Unit. We refer to violence directed at someone of marginalized gender identity and enabled by or mediated through digital technologies and devices such as smartphones, the internet, and social media platforms as technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). This violence can take many forms, may come from an individual or a group, and is aimed at both the world-famous and the “obscure.” But it is women politicians and activists who bear the brunt of it.
For instance, the treatment of former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern revealed how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated TFGBV. In her very first term, Ardern handled a terrorist attack, a volcanic eruption, and the global pandemic with widely hailed stoic integrity and empathy. And yet, she has been the subject of relentless attacks. Kenyan journalist Mwende Maundu, an expert in gender digital safety, highlighted that online harassment often drives women off platforms and likened the phenomenon of journalists choosing self-censorship to an attack on “the fundamental right to freedom of information.” The targeted Islamophobic hate and online abuse directed at Amira Elghawaby for her appointment by the Canadian government to combat Islamophobia highlights the extent of this abuse. A 2019 UNESCO research, The Chilling, highlighted that 73% of women journalists have experienced online violence.
But it is not only high-profile women who are affected. TFGBV amplifies existing inequality and is part of a recurring continuum of abuse in women’s lives across online and offline spaces. In 2013, an ex-boyfriend attempted to shame an Egyptian internet activist through the non-consensual sharing of a private video of her dancing. A decade later, advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled an explosion of deepfake porn that disproportionately targets women and girls, magnifying the problem of non-consensual intimate image (NCII) abuse.
Examining Online Abuse through an Intersectional Lens: Seyi Akiwowo, Glitch, the UK
Seyi Akiwowo, former councilor of Newham, a borough of London, founded the charity Glitch after being subjected to racist and sexist abuse online. She campaigned to ‘fix the glitch’ in the internet. Akiwowo’s journey reveals the need for an intersectional approach to address the compounding impacts of gender, race, and other identity factors in online abuse and focus on the challenges facing Black women. A lack of diversity in tech and inadequate media literacy further enable online toxicity.
Akiwowo argues that self-regulation by platforms has failed. Her advocacy recognizes the need for stakeholder research to deepen user understanding of online violence, including identity theft, cyberbullying, and surveillance to design feminist technology, and adopts a public health approach. Glitch was instrumental in getting women and girls named in the recently passed Online Safety Act (UK), and Akiwowo has been appointed to the Advisory Board of the Online Safety Act Network, which brings together parliamentarians, the regulator Ofcom, and civil society groups for effective implementation of the Act. The charity’s pioneering research, the Digital Misogynoir Report, highlights the ways Black women are harmed online, and puts forward recommendations for governments, tech companies and digital citizens to end misogynoir online and off. Akiwowo, in her recent book How to Stay Safe Online, promotes building a digital self-care toolkit and the concept of digital allyship, ultimately hoping for a safer, more joyous internet.
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