“Taking Action Against Tech-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence,” a new toolkit for trainers and advocates, offers practical ways to raise awareness and move towards overcoming tech-facilitated gender-based violence, said Rev. Nicole Ashwood, WCC programme executive for Just Community of Women and Men, at an online event on 12 September unveiling the resource. 

“We are all at risk. Tech-facilitated gender-based violence is no respecter of race, class, or nationality, and it has consequences,” she observed.

Tech-facilitated gender-based violence against women and girls is the “most pervasive form of human rights violation on the internet,” said Sarah Macharia, WACC programme manager for Gender and Communication. 

She noted that such online violence has wide-ranging political, societal, psychological, and economic impacts, including the withdrawal and silencing of women. 

She also pointed to the Global Digital Compact under development for the upcoming UN Summit of the Future that aims to foster an inclusive and open digital space that protects human rights. 

“Commitments and aspirations on digital participation, digital inclusion, on closing the digital divide: they are dead in water when violation of the rights of women and girls remains a defining feature of tech tools and tech spaces.” 

What is needed, she stressed, is “consistent data, good data” to drive policy change and create “evidence-based action plans.” The new toolkit, built on the methodology of WACC’s Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) in use for more than 25 years, enables the collection of good data in the social media sphere.

Monitoring for misogyny

Participants gained practical insights into how this good data collection works and how social media monitoring can build gender-focussed digital literacy through a presentation by Joan Sanyu Nankya of the Uganda Media Women’s Association.

The WACC partner recently ran a project to promote responsible coverage of women and girls in Uganda news media on the social platform X, formerly Twitter.

The association monitored the X accounts of 40 women journalists, politicians, and civil society activists as well as those of media houses for misogynistic comments and posts about the women. The results were sobering, according to Nankya. 

Tweets contained sexist stereotypes, objectification, body shaming, harassment, threats of violence, and remarks intending to dominate, discredit, and belittle the women. Women media professionals were targeted the most.

Become a social media watcher

The toolkit is about changing attitudes and practice, WACC deputy general secretary Sara Speicher said. 

Toolkit users become aware of the reality of tech-facilitated gender-based violence and are trained in the practical action of social media monitoring, gathering evidence, networking and involving others for advocacy at the local and global levels.

Speicher noted that the new gender justice resource takes up the framework of a workshop in December 2023 that equipped a first cohort of trainers, ten young church leaders who are introducing social media monitoring in their own communities. 

“Taking Action Against Tech-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence” is part of a joint WACC–WCC initiative to build a global gender-focussed observatory of social media, and all are welcome to participate, Speicher said. 

“Download the toolkit. Pull together a group,” she urged and invited registration for a virtual training session that WACC will be holding on 2 October to give toolkit readers added confidence in using the social media monitoring methodology introduced in the resource. 

Download the toolkit “Taking Action Against Tech-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence” for free in English, French, German, and Spanish

Register for the 2 October training in social media monitoring (3pm Geneva)

Learn more about the joint WACC–WCC initiative for gender justice online.