Born Digital, Born Free? A Socio-Legal Study on Young Women’s Experiences of Online Violence in South India

Help-seeking behaviours of those experiencing technology-facilitated GBV in Asia: implications for policy and programming

“…One such challenge is the western bias of technology companies. For example, their community standards, which outline acceptable conduct by their users, and reporting mechanisms, often lack the context to recognise and address culturallyspecific violence (Munusamy, 2018;Gurumurthy et al, 2019a;Sambasivan et al, 2019). For example, research in India found that content considered derogatory slang in the local culture was not addressed because platform reviewers were unable to recognise it as violence (Pasricha, 2016).…”

“…Other impediments to reporting include poor awareness of reporting mechanisms, perceptions that the platforms will not take action, and perceptions that filing a report is cumbersome and too complex (Munusamy, 2018;Gurumurthy et al, 2019a;Sambasivan et al, 2019). As most technology companies' headquarters are registered in western countries, governments in Asia have jurisdictional limits to the types and extent of regulations they can implement over them, especially if there is no regional physical presence (Pawar and Sakure, 2019).…”

Digital Access Opportunities for Women’s Empowerment Collectives: A Theory of Change Based on Social Capital

“…As described in Figure 1, wealth and education are the strongest determinants of access (Mohan et al, 2020), but gender norms also play a significant role in preventing women from accessing technology (Barboni et al, 2018;GSMA, 2017a;Gurumurthy & Chami, 2018;Scott et al, 2021). Household-level monitoring and surveillance of women's use of digital technologies (particularly young women's use) have been observed by multiple studies, which attribute this condition to male anxieties about 'their women exercising agency, especially sexual agency' (Gurumurthy et al, 2019). Young women's participation online treads the boundary of being perceived as 'immodest', or as an invitation for reprisals for sexual agency (Gurumurthy et al, 2019).…”

“…Household-level monitoring and surveillance of women's use of digital technologies (particularly young women's use) have been observed by multiple studies, which attribute this condition to male anxieties about 'their women exercising agency, especially sexual agency' (Gurumurthy et al, 2019). Young women's participation online treads the boundary of being perceived as 'immodest', or as an invitation for reprisals for sexual agency (Gurumurthy et al, 2019). Women's self-reliant and active utilisation of mobile phones and the internet is seen as a threat to established gender norms, especially those related to sexuality, which can result in households and society imposing controls on women's mobile phone usage (Kovacs, 2017, cited in Gurumurthy & Chami, 2018.…”

“…In the context of SHGs and gender empowerment, any attempt at changing norms might mean causing a change to the social order, which in this context is patriarchy. Therefore, this might cause SHGs to be perceived as a threat to the patriarchal social order, just as mobile phones in the hands of women may be regarded as a threat (Gurumurthy et al, 2019). Also, there are often social sanctions associated with deviation from social norms and evidence suggests that there is a risk that SHGs may exacerbate gender conflict (Brody et al, 2016).…”