Cyber ​​gender violence is on the rise

Carolina Gomez Mena

Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, April 19, 2022, p. eleven

The accelerated digitization that resulted from the covid-19 pandemic has corroborated that as more women and girls turn to digital spaces, gender-based cyberviolence increasesas a mirror that reflects the structural inequalities of society, establishes the study Cyberviolence and cyberbullying against women and girls within the framework of the Convention of Belém do Pará.

This analysis confirms the continuity of gender violence outside and inside the Internet. In a study carried out by the Association for Progressive Communications, it was identified that half of those responsible for digital violence were people previously known by the female victims.

It has also been documented that “77 percent of cyberbullying victims have experienced at least one form of sexual or physical violence from an intimate partner, and that in 29 percent of intimate partner or domestic violence cases the perpetrator has used a spyware or geolocation equipment installed in electronic devices of the victims”.

Additionally, 54 percent of cyberbullying cases involved a first face-to-face encounter, and half of the women said they something had happened online that put them in physical danger.

The report by UN Women, the Spotlight Initiative and the Inter-American Commission of Women states that gender-based cyberviolence against women and girls is still a relatively unexplored field and on which many questions arise.

Stresses that online violence against women and girls neither has it been fully analyzed in the international legal framework of human rights nor fully integrated into international strategies against cybercrime, or for the prevention of gender-based violence, although some important efforts have been made initially led by Unicef with a focus on children.

It also notes that digital aggression based on gender are almost never framed in systemic violence that affects women and girls and, due to the lack of consensus around a concept that defines the characteristics of digital gender-based violence, the few national efforts that have been developed in this area have been partial or incomplete.

The brief highlights that it is a necessary and urgent task to make this growing form of violence visible, as well as to define standards on the scope of women’s right to a life free of digital violence in the context of the Inter-American Convention to Prevent , Punish and Eradicate Violence against Women or Convention of Belém do Pará.