‘Anxiety, paranoia, fear’: The consequences of digital violence against women

This article is published in association with United Nations.

Online attacks against women are getting worse, according to the UN, causing lasting damage that can spill over into real world violence. Leading activists from Spain and Latin America met at UN Headquarters on Wednesday to rally women and share strategies on fighting back.

During the event, held as part of the Commission on the Status of Women, the world’s biggest gender equality conference, delegates from the region outlined the many forms of digital violence, warned of the chilling effect that online harassment and discrimination are having on women’s participation in political life and shared some of the most effective ways to create safe digital spaces for women.

After the meeting, UN News caught up with some of the speakers, who included politicians and rights advocates, to hear first-hand about the consequences of digital violence in their countries and how to deal with it.

‘We must remain united’

UN News/Conor Lennon

Anaís Burgos is a politician in the Mexican parliament. She won a round of applause after proudly holding up a doll representing Claudia Sheinbaum, the first woman president of Mexico.

“Digital violence affects all women who are dedicated to public affairs, both at work and in our personal relationships. It leaves very important traces, because it affects your mental and physical health, creating anxiety, discrimination, paranoia and fear.

I can’t publish anything personal on social media, because people will search for anything to attack me, such as my family, my origins or my skin colour. Some of my colleagues have thought about leaving politics altogether, so that they are no longer the targets of attacks and violence.

However, I believe that we have to continue. I have to make this violence visible; I have to denounce it. And as a politician, I have to change it. If it happens to me, someone with a public voice to denounce it, what does it do to a young girl who doesn’t have such a platform? Or Afro-Mexican women, indigenous women and women living with disabilities?

We need more legislation to punish this type of violence in all its forms. It has advanced so quickly, and artificial intelligence is not even regulated in some of the countries of our region.

We must remain united. The rights women have acquired so far would not have been won without a collective voice. And we need men to understand that, for violence to end, we need their participation and support.”

‘Pre-bunking’ and ‘inoculating’ against disinformation

UN News/Conor Lennon

Roberta Braga is the founder and Executive Director of the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas (DDIA), a hub for research and initiatives aimed at strengthening trust between communities and democracy.

“Polarisation and distrust are amplified through social media. There is a silver lining, though. We are now able to identify what we call “meta narratives”, stories that get recycled and used in different contexts in different countries to attack women, which means that we have the information and the tools we need to both prepare and counter them ahead of time.

We call it “pre-bunking” or “inoculation”, which is essentially explaining to people the tactics of manipulation and the narratives that get used against them online so they can recognise them when they see them and become a little more resilient.

Soundcloud

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There is very little space between our online and offline worlds now, and digital violence can definitely become real world violence. It can lead to groups of people sitting outside your home, propagating hatred against you and even attacking you in person.

I have been very lucky in that I have not been the target of coordinated attacks, but I know a lot of women who have been subjected to abuse. For example, a friend of mine who was about to serve on a US Government board to counter disinformation, received a huge onslaught of online attacks. It was so bad that they cancelled the initiative in its entirety. She was pregnant at the time, and her husband, even her baby, were also targets. It can get very toxic”.

‘Time and again, technology is used against women’

UN News

Marcela Hernández is the co-founder of the Latin-American network of Digital Defenders, an organization promoting comprehensive legislation to address and punish digital violence.

“Currently we have documented more than 700 policies by different government entities throughout Mexico, including police, prosecutors’ offices and courts to counter digital violence. In the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico City, there is even a specialized agency to prosecute crimes of digital violence.

I remember the first time I knew of a girl who committed suicide because of a video of her being sexually abused was circulated online. Even though I didn’t know her, it marked me. I knew at that moment that more things like this were going to happen.

When a new technology reaches the mass market, it is used time and time again as a tool to commit violence against women, to subordinate and objectify us. When artificial intelligence became widespread in 2024, there were immediately cases of boys in universities and schools in different parts of the world taking images of their classmates to create sexually explicit material, without their consent.

This is why we need to appropriate technology ourselves; women creating online tools for the benefit of other women”.

These interviews have been translated from Spanish and edited for clarity and length.