Featured image from UN Women: https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/faqs/tech-facilitated-gender-based-violence
Mahima Kaul
Headlines recounting incidents of assault on Indian college campuses often report on physical violence mixed with technology facilitated gender based violence [TFGBV] – for example, a woman stripped in order for the assailants to take pictures and videos. Can one truly distinguish between “offline” and “online” crimes anymore?
There has been an instinct to view these incidents purely from the prism of takedown – and indeed it is very important for non-consensual images and videos to be removed from the assailants device, the internet, and any other places the content has ended up. Current work amongst lawyers and policy experts focus on examining the available language under the Information Technology (IT) Act and Indian Penal Code (IPC) to see if laws adequately and accurately cover these offences.
But the narrow focus on takedown (requiring content to be taken off the internet) misses a larger opportunity to question the root causes of the rising instances of TFGBV. In a recent policy framework published by Delhi-based think tank, The Dialogue, the proposition is to look at addressing TFGBV through a number of domains which should adequately and holistically address the issues. These are: access, prevention, intervention, response and remediation, recovery and research.
Let’s look at a practical way in which this is applied. Taking the same incident cited above – “a woman stripped in order for the assailants to take pictures and videos”. In the current context, the most likely questions will be: were the assailants caught, and which sections of the law were they booked under?
Perhaps, “we” as journalists, academics, and even victim-survivors can expand the scope of investigation. So, we could ask: did the assailants take away the woman’s phone during the assault, so that she could not contact anyone for help? We could ask, who are the assailants and what is their motivation for this crime – is it personal, financial or is there some other incentive? Have they done this before? We can investigate the takedown mechanisms that are in play with regards to the device and apps where the content has been transferred is. We can ask if the police were helpful to the victim, and respectful, and if she has the legal help she needs. We can further ask if the victim has any desire or resource to mental health services as she recovers from this violent incident. And finally, we could look at statistics on crime against women, cross checked by TFGBV, to understand the rate at which these crimes might be rising.
What does asking different questions do? We expand the points of success and failures from a single focus – in many cases arrests and content takedowns – to ask for better solutions from society on the whole. Additionally, when we start asking questions about the perpetrator’s motivations for the victim’s access to healing services we automatically bring into the conversation questions about research on perpetrators (and not just an account of incidents), prevention programs that can be deployed to deter youth from indulging in these crimes, and non-profits and mental health services that work with victim survivors.
For too long, the lack of evidence-based questions has resulted in coverage and response around TFGBV that is dominated by scandalous or patriarchal responses which question the victim, not the perpetrator. Wide ranging discussion and shifting our analysis can help to move conversations towards accountability. Even as institutions grapple with “new” crimes and fast moving technology, such as new concerns over AI enabled TFGBV, by asking the right questions that keep the focus on root causes, we do not assign societal judgement and blame onto victim-survivors.
We need a global conversation on the impact of TFGBV on women and minorities today. The only way it can have a positive impact is we structure the conversation around a policy framework.
AUTHOR BIO
Mahima Kaul is the Director of Public Policy for Bumble across Asia-Pacific. Her work includes talking to regulators, academics, NGOs working on online safety issues, including gender based violence. Previously she headed Twitter’s public policy work in India and South Asia where she worked across a range of issues including their regulatory concerns, philanthropy and governance partnerships. She also led the new media initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, a prominent Indian think tank, focusing on free expression and internet governance. She has also worked as a journalist, and has been published widely on these issues. Views are personal.
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