Select Gender-Based Violence Literature Reviews: Impact of Information Communication Technology (ICT) on Gender-Based Violence

This literature review, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), examines the relationship between ICT ownership, access, and usage and both online and offline harassment and GBV. Evidence confirms that ICT plays a role in online and offline incidences of GBV. The literature review identified several pathways between ICT ownership, access, and usage and both online and offline harassment and GBV. ICTs may directly facilitate offline GBV, offline GBV may be perpetrated to gain access to ICTs for online GBV, and online harassment may incite offline GBV. The types of harassment experienced online often follow patterns of offline abuse, including insults, unsolicited sexual advances, surveillance, and threats of physical harm. Online abuse is categorically gendered, as feminine usernames are more likely to receive sexually explicit or threatening messages. Interventions on online GBV should include education and awareness, civil society interventions may include working across service providers to strengthen support networks for victims, advocacy may shed light on the impact of ICT-facilitated GBV in the online and offline lives of survivors, and foster culture changes towards rejecting GBV activities. Web-based interventions may include anti-spyware tools and design that supports victim control of devices and accounts. Globally, legal systems are not equipped to respond to cases in which ICTs facilitate GBV. Because online harassment is not broadly criminalized, it is often inadequately investigated. At the country-level, legislation related to violence against women must be updated to include digital harms, as well as related offline abuse. The growth of ICT-based interventions for GBV has far outpaced the evidence base in all global settings, with inadequate formative research and monitoring and evaluation limiting evidence-based uptake of the myriad of interventions. ICTs can be classified along a spectrum of the victim's engagement, including direct (e.g., messaging), indirect (e.g., public information used by a perpetrator), or no engagement (e.g., spyware). The use of ICTs, particularly as "leapfrog" technology to achieve development targets, is increasingly ubiquitous, with access to 21st-century ICTs such as computers, the Internet, mobile phones, and tablets increasing for individuals worldwide, including in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).