CYBER VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS

public from violent or abusive behaviours
• Political and governmental bodies need to use
their licensing prerogative to ensure that only
those Telecoms and search engines are allowed to
connect with the public that supervise content and
its dissemination
• Regulators have a role to play,even if the solution
to this challenge must be sought primarily in
political realm
• Collaboration among media and technology
unions, associations, clubs, organizations,
professionals and women’s media networks
is also critical to promote women’s leadership
and decision-making in media and such
technologies. 117
Part of the ‘soft’ mix is the growing movement
around digital citizenship, which represents an evolution
in our norms — the ways we think about our personal
responsibility, and the ways we respect and look out
for others online. Studies have shown that the more
removed you are from a situation; the less likely you
are to act. Now that a cyber-touch is recognized as
equally as harmful as a physical touch, all citizens,
must prepare themselves to take the appropriate action.
Responsibility begins with individual users, and extends
to all participants in the online ecosystem — the users,
publishers, providers and developers that define our
common digital worlds.
Ultimately, this is also a people-centred challenge and
one that must be tackled hand in hand with broader
efforts around ending violence against women and gender
equality:
• A broad based movement. Care needs to be
taken not to stereotype or place disproportionate
importance on one form of violence over another.
Instead, the response to online offences against
girls and women should be seen as part of the
broader movement against sexual exploitation and
abuse of any kind.
• Core roots of mainstreaming violence. There is
widespread representation of VAWG in mainstream
culture, including in contemporary and popular
music, movies, the gaming industry and the
general portrayal of women in popular media.
Recent research on how violent video games
are turning children, mostly boys, into ‘killing
zombies’ 118 are also a part of mainstreaming
violence. And while the presentation and
analysis of this research is beyond the scope of
this paper 119 , the links to the core roots of the
problem are very much in evidence and cannot be
overlooked.
• Keeping up with the pace of change. The challenge
of keeping up with the technological pace of
change will require a parallel pace of change in
the social behaviours and norms of netizens. An
‘open-source’ approach to changing behaviours is
needed with the help of an enlightened networked
society.
• Social movement using ICTs. When social
movements successfully condemn and
delegitimize a social practice, judges and
politicians often jump on the bandwagon. The
same technologies that allow citizen rights to
challenge authoritarian governments also allow
for public alarm over online sexual crimes. On
the home and the workplace fronts, the women’s
movement has discredited the reasons behind
society’s protection of domestic violence and
sexual harassment and engaged the attention of
lawmakers, the courts and law enforcement. 120
This is an ongoing dialogue even in some
countries where domestic laws against VAW are
only just being enforced.
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