Online gender-based violence
Open-knowledge reference entry
Online gender-based violence is targeted harassment and prejudice through technology against people based on their gender. The term is also similar to technology facilitated gender-based violence, digital violence, online harassment, cyberbullying and cybersexism, but the latter terms are not gender-specific. Gender-based harassment differs from these because of the attention it draws to discrimination and online violence targeted specifically because of their gender.
Online harassment is not new but a continuation of longstanding gendered hierarchies and prejudice against marginalised groups. For women, queer individuals, and other marginalized gender identities online engagement carries both heightened risks and opportunities for resistance. Many face hyper-visibility, systemic erasure, and coordinated harassment, as seen in India with feminist journalists targeted for their gender and religious identities, or in Africa where LGBTQ+ activists navigate state censorship and platform invisibility.
Digital spaces also enable collective action and solidarity: movements like #PinjraTod and #MeTooIndia, Latin American cyberfeminist initiatives, and African LGBTQ+ networks use social media, encryption, and participatory storytelling to challenge oppression, build community, and document injustice.
Forms
Online gender-based violence can include unwanted sexual remarks, non-consensual circulation or distribution of sexually explicit media or content, threats, doxing, cyberstalking and harassment, online gendered disinformation, deepfakes, and gender-based discriminatory memes and posts among other things. Online gender-based violence derives from gender-based violence but it is perpetuated through electronic means.
Online gender-based violence may occur through various ways.
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This entry incorporates text from “Online gender-based violence” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.