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Technology and digital spaces provide extensive opportunities through their contribution to women’s empowerment and ending gender inequalities. However, technology products and platforms are also spaces and tools which can be wielded, either with or without intention, to cause harm. They enable gender-based violence to be committed, assisted, aggravated and amplified. Technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TF GBV) targets all women but is particularly pervasive among those women and girls with intersecting identities . Further, women who use technology and digital spaces in their professional lives, such as journalists, activists and politicians, are disproportionately targeted with TF GBV. This has a detrimental silencing effect and serious consequences for democracies and societies.
From November 29 to December 1, 2022, the Wilson Center's Science and Technology Innovation Program and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) held a three-day expert symposium on technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TF GBV) with stakeholders from civil society, academia, the technology industry, government, regulation, and intergovernmental organizations and representatives from every continent, including over 25 countries. These publications are a product of the converging of stakeholders to discuss where we are now in terms of preventing technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and where the processes of collecting data, the methods of measurement, creating and improving technology, and crafting policies needs to go.
More of UNFPA's work on TF GBV can be found here.
Background on the Project
Prevalence of TF GBV
TF GBV is widespread. Available data from 51 countries with the highest Internet penetration rates suggest that as many as 38 per cent of women have personally experienced online violence, while 85 per cent of women have witnessed online violence being committed against another woman. Over half, or 58 per cent of all young women and girls, between 15 and 25 years of age, have been subjected to online harassment in 22 countries globally. These statistics show that TF GBV is not only shockingly pervasive but starts early and contributes to the normalization of GBV against women and girls online and offline.
Furthermore, TF GBV often occurs in a continuum of online and offline violence. In a context of offline violence, abuse is likely to continue in online spaces and through technological means, and vice versa: abuse that starts in the digital world can turn into threats and actions of physical violence.
Global Symposium Information
Wilson Center’s Science and Technology Innovation Program and the United Nations Population Fund held a three-day expert symposium, November 29- December 1, on technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TF GBV) with stakeholders from civil society, academia, the technology industry, government, regulation, and intergovernmental organizations and representatives from every continent, including over 25 countries.
The purpose of the symposium was to: (1) provide a platform for exchanging knowledge and good practices by civil society organizations and technology companies to address TF GBV; (2) identify challenges and opportunities to advance progress; and (3) foster collaboration and partnerships between actors in the TF GBV space, to create innovative solutions that comprehensively address the issue.
