A global campaign called body rights that fights image-based and other types of “technology-facilitated gender-based violence,” or TFGBV has been organised by the UNFPA, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, and supported by Global Affairs Canada. The campaign is part of an international effort to raise awareness of the prevalence of and the need to address such harassment and abuse of women and girls around the world.
“The impacts are very, very real,” says Alexandra Robinson, the global gender-based violence technical advisor for UNFPA. While the issue and impacts aren’t new, she says, the organization began studying TFGBV in 2020, just as the world experienced a vast expansion of digital connectedness under the COVID-19 pandemic.
A 2023 report in the United Kingdom noted that women are less confident about their online safety than men and feel less able to share opinions on the web. Robinson says women concerned about being targeted online often limit their digital interactions or disengage completely, which can deter them from participating in public life as journalists, politicians, academics, and human-rights defenders.
Teenah Jutton, a member of the National Assembly experienced first-hand the technological perils of being a public figure. She hopes her activism as well as wider global attention to the problem of TFGBV will encourage other young women to become active politically and fight against TFGBV.
After she was elected in 2019 as the youngest member of parliament in the island nation off the coast of Africa, manipulated degrading images and pornographic videos of her were circulated online through fake profiles.
“I was shattered, completely shattered. For a whole night I didn’t sleep,” recalls Jutton, especially because in her culture “a lady’s dignity is the most prized jewel.” Jutton decided to “transform that moment into a purpose,” and worked to change the law. The Cybersecurity and Cybercrime Act adopted in Mauritius in October 2021 makes it punishable by law to publish a post on social media with the malicious intent to cause harm, she says.
Jutton remembers her family initially trying to dissuade her from going into politics because “it is dirty”. She hopes her activism as well as wider global attention to the issue will encourage other young women to follow her lead.
“Standing alone we can make a little difference, but standing together we can move mountains,” adds Jutton. “The unbridled freedom that cyber platforms offer to those bent on harming innocent people means we must constantly introduce new safety controls, keep reinforcing and updating existing laws and explore the need to introduce new and sterner legislation.”
Suzie Dunn, a professor of law at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law in Halifax, whose research includes TFGBV, notes that many women reconsider taking on public roles to avoid sexualized harassment.
“Women are losing their voices,” she says. “In more extreme cases, they just don’t engage in a public-facing Internet presence at all.” She notes the issue of TFGBV is especially prominent in low- and middle-income countries, given the early and rapid adoption of mobile phones there.
“Being able to access information and communicate with people has been a godsend in many ways. But once you bring technology in, it also increases the forms and the level of violence that people can experience,” she says. “When you have the technology, it means that people can access you 24/7, people can harass you 24/7, people can stalk you 24/7. And there is a broader audience for people who are spreading misogynistic messages.”
