How Technology is Being Used to Perpetrate Violence Against Women – And to Fight it
The Facts
- The World Health Organisation states that women are disproportionately the victims of violence worldwide.
- The UN estimates that 95% of aggressive behaviour, harassment, abusive language and denigrating images in online spaces are aimed at women and come from partners or former male partners.
- Both men and women are affected by cyberstalking, but a survey in India found that victims aged between 18-32 were predominantly female.
- Research in Argentina shows that a woman’s mobile phone is one of the first items to be destroyed by a violent partner.
- Information and communications technologies (ICTs) like the internet and mobile phones are a double-edged sword – they can be used by abusers to deepen their control and by survivors of violence to connect to help and by women’s rights defenders to inform, denounce and strategise to end violence.
This briefing relies on new research into how new technologies are being used by abusers and by women fighting back. The cases were uncovered in research commissioned by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) in 12 developing countries in 2009, unless an additional website reference is included.
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