Gender stereotyping exists both on and offline, say experts

Our Reporter
Dimapur, July 29 (EMN): Women continue to face gender-based violence and abuse with gender stereotyping existing both on and off line; even judiciary finds it difficult to tackle viral content, said Malvika Rajkumar from IT for Change.

She was speaking on “Platform accountability for online sexism and misogyny” during a panel discussion organised by The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Tattle Civic Tech on Thursday evening, to discuss the role of technology in mitigating online gender and sexual abuse.

The panel discussion was held as part of the launch of Uli, a browser plug-in based on machine leaning and non-Machine Learning approaches, to help mitigate online gender and sexual abuse.

Rajkumar pointed out that female politicians are not spared from online hate and the target and abuse is never about politics but more of personal and gender-based attack.

She opined that it was important to recognise the pressing need to address global unevenness, the gap in the governess that happens in India and to recognise that digital crimes are evolving in India. She added that it is challenging to tackle online crimes.

Another panelist, Shohini Banerjee from Point of View, while sharing her experience on building Tech Sakhi, a helpline as a response to online gender-based violence, said “technology and platform are not neutral. The intention of platform is really important, however, platforms are negligible in the changes happening”.

Banerjee went on to inform that they were working on digital literacy with the communities.