Why Online Discrimination Against Women Should Concern Us All
Unequal access to the internet based on gender mirrors other inequalities in our societies
“Despite the impressive and inspirational gains made by women, gender equality in freedom of expression remains a distant goal. When women raise their voices, too often they are suppressed. In the digital age, the Internet has become the new battleground in the struggle for women’s rights, amplifying opportunities for women to express themselves but also multiplying possibilities for repression”.
This phrase, written by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Irene Khan, is part of the first report focused on the correlation between gender and freedom of opinion and expression in the 27-year history of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, released in 2021.
In other words, cyberspace is not free and democratic as it could be, especially for women. As the report states, although freedom of expression is protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in many parts of the world women cannot exercise that right without fear or oppression — either because of discriminatory practices from governments and societies, justifications derived from cultural and social norms, or because of states’ lack of capabilities to promote access and protect girls and women from threats to their freedom, privacy and/or safety.
The Special Rapporteur recognizes that both causes and solutions are multi-faceted, and that women’s experiences vary according to a myriad of factors such as their race, religion, sexual orientation, age, geographic location, social, economic, and legal status. Communities, governments and enterprises must take responsibility to improve equitable internet access, to promote policies focused on women’s participation, and to protect women and girls from harassment and abuse.
Unequal access
Known as the “gender digital divide,” unequal access to the internet based on gender mirrors other inequalities present in societies. International Telecommunication Union statistics shows that the gap is still wide (more than 10% difference) in the least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, Africa, and the Arab States.
A survey from the Best Practice Forum (BPF) on Gender identified the effect of culture and norms as the main barrier preventing women to benefit from the web, followed by affordability. Other factors are lack of skills and of relevant content, as well as women’s participation in decision-making roles pertaining to the internet and availability of relevant policies and infrastructure.
Moreover, freedom of expression includes to “seek and receive information and ideas of all kinds”. Women face difficulties accessing and finding relevant information online, when it is deemed as immoral. This censorship may come from governmental rules, from social media companies’ own policies (banning content related to sexual health, for example) or from cultural norms (prioritizing boys’ access to technological devices and even prohibiting girls and women from being online, like in North India).
Therefore, women and girls are unable to make informed choices and to fight for their rights — especially when the coronavirus pandemic forced people to rely heavily on the internet. There are also economic effects: women often cannot pursue education online and end up discouraged to take careers on the technological field.
More often than we think, those who dare to challenge the status quo are persecuted by their own government. Relying on outdated legislation based on morality or national security, women face legal prosecution, heavy fines, or even imprisonment when producing online content. In 2020, the Egyptian government arrested at least ten women TikTok influencers. According to Amnesty International, they “are being punished for the way they dress, act, ‘influence’ the broader public on social media, and earn money online”. The sentences can be as harsh as a decade in prison.
Actions as little as lip-synching and dancing can provide sufficient evidence for prosecution for indecency. If that is not outrageous enough, using the online space to report sexual and physical violence can ironically turn the victim into a criminal for “violating family principles and values” and “inciting debauchery”, as happened to Egyptian 18 years old Menna Abdelaziz after unsuccessfully trying to report violence in a police station and then talking live about it on Instagram.
A support social media campaign were created, Abdelaziz were later released and the real criminals on her case were sent to trial. The trauma stays forever though. It’s no surprise then that many women will think twice before asking for help.
Online gender-based violence
The list of online violence against women are big: doxing, defamation, “sextortion,” stigmatization or even social judgment and so on. From West to East, there are attempts to oppress the voices of women, including of those who gain professional prominence, especially journalists, women’s rights defenders, and politicians.
Research commissioned by The Guardian on 70 million reader’s comments showed that female journalists are more subjected to abuse and trolling than their male counterparts. As many as eight out of the ten most targeted writers were women. The number of blocked comments in women’s articles were especially high in male-dominated sectors, like sports and technology, or in texts about feminism and rape.
It is right to say that both men and women suffer from online violence. However, the most severe types, such as sexual harassment and stalking, disproportionately affect women. In some cases, those threats can become real crimes outside of the digital world, placing at risk not only the woman but also her family and friends.
As Soraya Chemaly wrote for the Huffpost:
“When men face online harassment and abuse, it is first and foremost designed to embarrass and shame. When women are targeted, the abuse is more likely to be gendered, sustained, sexualized and linked to off-line violence, such as stalking and the very real threat of rape. It’s meant to intimidate, control and silence.”
Unfortunately, repressive tactics can be effective and lead to self-censorship. Emotional or psychological harm, harm to reputation, physical harm, sexual harm, economic losses, invasion of privacy, loss of identity, and limitation of mobility are all possible consequences of online violence against women.
How to change this reality
Women’s online inequality and the abusive behavior targeted toward them perpetuate a broader gender discrimination. Solutions must find the root causes and change them at societal level through time. Understanding the local contexts is imperative to planning effective strategies.
As UN’s Human Rights Council recognizes, “the active participation of women, on equal terms with men, at all levels of decision-making, is essential to the achievement of equality, sustainable development, peace and democracy”. So first and most importantly, women should be included in decision-making processes concerning their technology usage. For instance, girls and women’s opinions are valuable for the creation of new community guidelines and public policies intended to solve problems pinned from their experiences.
Where availability and affordability are concerned, governments must invest in infrastructure to provide affordable internet access, targeting specifically the gender gap, as well as provide public safe spaces for women to navigate the web and harness their digital skills and data literacy, such as in libraries and schools. Moreover, from an early age, girls should receive technological education and proper motivation to pursue careers in that industry.
Furthermore, governments have the responsibility to protect human rights, while companies must respect them. Policies must guarantee accessibility to content directed to women, especially related to sexual and reproductive health. Technology companies are often accused of having biased and subjective community guidelines, so they must work on continuous improvement applying a human rights perspective and gender lenses, must be transparent, and must provide comparable reports about the content they restrict. Instead of each platform having their own rules, a unified, universal document could be designed.
There is evidence that when new rules and legal measures are created, women feel safer to keep participating in the online sphere. Nevertheless, existing laws and policies are often not prepared to deal with online violence, given their specific characteristics of potential reach, speed and impact. Investments must be made to adapt or create new regulations and to train personnel, as Finland did.
Gender-based violence has to be specifically targeted by social media enterprises, which must provide easy and visible report mechanisms and support the victims, offering options on how to deal with those kind of situations in the platforms. Apart from removal of abusive content and holding users accountable (which is the minimum expected), those platforms might also consider other actions such as demonetization and fact-checking. They should invest in technology to monitor, analyze, and distribute data of online abuse, thereby fostering research on the field.
In 2021, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Tik Tok agreed to a series of commitments proposed by the World Wide Web Foundation focusing on two areas. The first is content curation, which offers more settings for women to decide who can interact with their posts, to simplify user experience and access to safety tools, and to reduce the amount of abusive content women see.
The second is abuse reporting, working on offering women the ability to track and manage reports, greater capacity to address context and/or language, providing more policy and product guidance when reporting abuse, and establishing additional ways for women to access help and support during the reporting process. It is the first step to take the issue seriously and end a culture of impunity in the internet.
International organizations and local communities are key players in advancing women’s freedom of expression. They can collaborate with companies and governments to work on local realities to promote digital education, internet access, and cultural changes. Launched in 2018 by UN Women, in partnership with the African Union Commission (AUC) and the International Telecommunication Unit (ITU), the African Girls Can Code Initiative is one in a myriad of positive examples worldwide. It has already provided training and guidance to 600 girls, presenting them with new professional paths and entrepreneurship possibilities.
Raising awareness about the issue is also relevant to create a safer online space, a virtual community that recognizes the problem and does not tolerate violence and oppression against girls and women. All actors involved can collaborate with educational campaigns.
The silencing of women due to violations of freedom of expression rights limits their voices on public debates and reinforces gender inequality, with pervasive consequences to democracy and development, jeopardizing the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 (“Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”).
On that account, denying women equal space in society puts at risk human development as a whole and must concern us all. The SDGs pledge to “leave no one behind” — but there can be no real progress if a huge part of the global population is not digitally included.
This op-ed was produced for the class Gender in International Affairs at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs. I thank Professor Raymond Smith, Robert Stribley and classmates for their feedbacks and guidance.
A version of this article was published on February 25, 2022 on OpenGlobalRights.
