VIOLENCE against women is an admission of the inability of mostly male perpetrators to forge balanced, respectful associations with females. The 2025 International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women marks the launch of the ‘UNITE to End Digital Violence against Women and Girls’ campaign. The drive extends over 16 days and concludes on International Human Rights Day. Tech-facilitated gender-based violence is a predominant feature of our online environment — 3,171 complaints were registered across the country last year. According to the Digital Rights Foundation, the highest count of 386 reports were logged in May. Cyber harassment topped the list with 2,741 complaints. Shockingly, 36pc emerged from areas where FIA cybercrime wings are operational. The categorisation of cases by gender, unsurprisingly, revealed that a total of 1,772 were reported by women, and 1,365 by men. The data also suggests a disproportionate victimisation of women through non-consensual intimate images and image-based abuse to bully, blackmail and cause “reputational damage”. Moreover, the foundation’s findings say 90pc of harassment complaints with the agency are from women. Global figures too reveal that gendered abuse persists unhindered. In 2024, the Economist Intelligence Unit stated that internationally, 85pc women experienced online harassment in various forms.

Year after year, lofty declarations seem to save fewer women. Online or offline, abuse extracts a life toll. It hampers women’s access to education, employment, and even political participation: all too often working women face online cruelty, while many female public office holders have contemplated quitting politics. These statistics mean permanently altered stories. Safeguards that ensure sanitised digital spaces for women are vital. We must introduce clarity and precision in legislations and their enforcement, inculcate digital literacy to battle the multiple aspects of TFGBV, and actively reduce the digital gender gap. Gender-sensitised LEAs, enhanced data protection laws for online security, with widespread knowledge of digital rights can bridge the gulf between pro-women laws and women’s lived experiences. Governments cannot reserve preventive responses for the privileged alone. It results in the scarcity of community-driven awareness initiatives as well as abysmal GBV conviction rates, as evident in the Sustainable Social Development Organisation’s Mapping Gender-Based Violence 2024 report. Justice, online and offline, means consent is sacrosanct.

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2025