JOIN USIt is a matter of concern that India’s women politicians are the target of serious online abuse. According to an Amnesty International report, women politicians received an average of 113 ‘problematic’ or ‘abusive’ tweets per day. Analysing some 1,14,716 tweets directed at 95 women politicians during the 2019 general elections, Amnesty found a fifth of them to have sexist or misogynist content. Although online abuse of women politicians happens across the world, the problem is particularly serious in India. Indian women politicians are at the receiving end of nearly double the harassment that their counterparts in the UK or the US face. Women politicians and those from marginalised castes are particularly vulnerable to online abuse. The Amnesty study found that they face 59% more threatening and hate-filled tweets. Muslim women received 94.1% more ethnic or religious slurs than women leaders from other faiths. Women politicians of some political parties were targeted more for online slurs. Those from the Congress suffered 45.3% more abusive tweets than those from the BJP.
The Amnesty International report shows that gender-based violence online is assuming serious proportions. While this study explored abusive tweets targeting women politicians during election time, the situation for women in other professions, girl students and others is no less alarming. Indeed, women journalists, social activists and actors are often targeted viciously, even threatened with gang rape for expressing strong opinions or any opinion at all. It is evident that in our patriarchal culture, men and women, too, expect women to not have an opinion and remain silent. Those who dare to speak up are trashed by trolls and threatened in an attempt to silence them. There is a danger that such online trolling of women politicians, in particular, will result in a fall in female participation in the political arena.
A multi-pronged approach is needed to tackle gender-based online violence. We need to tackle notions of patriarchy that are being used to justify abuse and violence against women. Those seeking to silence women online, whether they are men or women, should be taken to task. This will require women facing online abuse to file complaints and leverage the law. Importantly, the government must demand greater accountability from online platforms like Twitter. The Amnesty report recommends that Twitter and other platforms should be made to improve mechanisms to report abuse and clarify how they define, identify and respond to threats and abuse. While governments are willing to arm-twist social media platforms and companies to censor posts that are critical of them or show them in an unfavourable light, they are dragging their feet when it comes to protecting women’s right to expression.