The internet was meant to connect and empower. For women — including women with disabilities — it has become a new arena for gender-based violence. It’s time to name it, understand it, and address it.
Technologically Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) is not a new form of violence — it is a new delivery mechanism for deeply rooted patterns of control, humiliation, and harm. Driven by entrenched gender norms, gender stereotyping, and unequal power relations, TFGBV weaponises digital spaces against women in ways that are intimate, public, and often irreversible.
Women with disabilities face this violence with compounded vulnerability. Already navigating systemic exclusion and marginalisation, they are disproportionately targeted — yet frequently overlooked in policy responses and support systems designed without them in mind.
“Online violence is not separate from real-world violence. It is real-world violence — it just uses a screen.”
How TFGBV shows up
TFGBV takes many forms, all of which cause serious harm to women’s dignity, safety, and wellbeing. Deep image sharing and non-consensual intimate image distribution — commonly referred to as revenge pornography — strip women of control over their own bodies and reputations. Doxing, the public exposure of private personal information, places women at risk of stalking, harassment, and physical violence.
Online verbal and emotional abuse, sexual harassment, and gender bashing — the coordinated targeting of women for their identity or opinions — create a climate of fear that silences women and drives them offline. These are not minor inconveniences. They are violations of the right to dignity and integrity that have lasting psychological, social, and professional consequences.
The link to domestic and intimate partner violence
TFGBV does not exist in isolation. It is frequently an extension of domestic and intimate partner violence, with technology serving as a tool of ongoing control and abuse — monitoring movements, sharing images as punishment, or using digital platforms to intimidate and threaten. For survivors trying to leave abusive situations, the digital dimension of violence can make escape feel impossible and safety elusive.
“For survivors of intimate partner violence, the abuse does not end when they walk out the door — it can follow them into every device they own.”
A rights-based issue, not just a safety issue
TFGBV is fundamentally a human rights issue. It violates women’s rights to dignity, privacy, equality, and freedom of expression. Legal frameworks — national and regional — carry an obligation to protect these rights and hold perpetrators accountable. Critically, that protection must extend equally to women with disabilities, whose specific experiences and barriers must be explicitly included rather than assumed.
Recommendations
1. Strengthen and enforce legal frameworks
Enact specific legislation criminalising TFGBV — including non-consensual image sharing, doxing, and online harassment — with clear definitions, proportionate penalties, and accessible reporting mechanisms for all women, including those with disabilities.
2.Require social media and digital platforms to implement robust, accessible reporting tools, swiftly remove harmful content, and adopt transparent moderation policies that recognise TFGBV as a distinct category of harm requiring urgent response.
3.Invest in education and awareness
Integrate digital safety and gender equality into school curricula and community programmes. Challenge the gender norms and stereotypes that normalise online violence, and equip young people with the tools to recognise and resist it.
4. Expand survivor-centred support services
Fund and scale psychosocial, legal, and digital support services for survivors of TFGBV. Ensure that services are trauma-informed, confidential, and equipped to address the intersection of online and offline violence, including where it overlaps with domestic abuse.
5. Centre women with disabilities in all responses
Explicitly include women with disabilities in TFGBV policy design, data collection, and service delivery.