If Ghana is to make progress technologically 21st Century, women and girls’ issues, especially in the area of information and communications technologies (ICTs) ought not to be relegated to the background.
Ghana cannot be said to be an island on its own regarding socio-economic, political and cultural issues affecting women globally. Thus, before touching on women’s rights online issues in the country, it is relevant to take a quick glance at a global report on women’s rights online that was published by the World Wide Web Foundation in October 2015.
For instance, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the report said two girls (teens) private photos, taken by a boyfriend, are posted to Facebook without their consent. In Bosnia, a young woman is covertly photographed and pursued online by a stalker who claims they have a “forbidden love.”
These are just a few examples of the many forms of online harassment that women including those in Ghana face. Ghanaian women are regularly subject to online rape threats, online harassment, cyberstalking, blackmail, and more.
As the internet becomes an increasingly important part of human existence and a critical space for marginalized populations to make their voices heard, a Ghanaian woman’s inability to feel safe online is an impediment to her freedom, as well as to her basic human rights. Yet, the problem of online violence and harassment is often overlooked in discussions of violence against women in the country.
“Online violence against women is an overt expression of the gender discrimination and inequality,” says Jackson Kee of the Association for Progressive Communications , a Global Fund for Women grantee partner, has stated.
She continued: “The most important way to shift this is to enable women and girls to engage with the Internet at all levels – from use, creation, and development to the imagination of what it should and can be.”
The Association for Progressive Communications has just released findings that examined over 1,000 cases of technology based violence from seven countries, and found that women aged 18 to 30 are most likely to experience online violence, and that less than half of the cases reported to authorities have been investigated.
In a world where we seamlessly navigate the online and the offline everyday – often being in both spaces at the same time – it is crucial for us to address the violence that women face in both realms. Online violence is real violence because it limits the right to free and full participation, the freedom of expression and the right to safety and to privacy.
The first step to addressing online violence against women is to recognize that it is a legitimate and harmful manifestation of gender based violence.
“Individual women who experience online abuse understand that online violence is real violence, but very often their peers, friends, or families don’t. Sometimes it’s laughed off. Some families restrict girls and women from accessing the internet if they complain of violence, so they don’t tell their families.
Daniel Kwansah, an IT Expert with EEAR Multimedia believes “this is similar to locking up girls at home for their own ‘protection’ or restricting their mobility in the name of protecting them? It doesn’t work offline, and so it won’t work online.”
He said addressing online violence will require collective efforts from individuals, corporations, and governments.
“Just like the global, sustained effort to end violence against Ghanaian women broadly, achieving online safety for women takes multiple, concerted strategies by different actors,” he suggested.
He continued: “The Ghana Government needs to include online violence against women as part of their plans to end violence against women as a whole, and see this as a larger barrier for women and girls in exercising the full range of their human rights. Social media companies in the country need to take proactive steps to ensure their space does not enable these acts.”
Women and girls deserve to live in a world where they are free from physical violence—domestic abuse, sexual assault and rape as a weapon of war—as well as violence online. Online violence is a symptom of deep-seated gender inequality, and just one more way that women and girls are denied their human rights.
Consequently, there is the need to support women’s groups engaged in tackling online violence – from reporting online harassment cases to providing counselling and training.
Paul Williams, a website designer in Accra said: “We must demand a better Internet where can make their voices heard free from violence. And while women’s rights activists have a roadmap for how to get there, it will require action and co-operation from governments, companies, and of course, individuals.”
“We need policies that are based on the actual harms that women face online. We need recognition of online violence as real violence; and we need to deal with violence without restricting women’s freedoms,” he added.
On her part, Ms Jemima Abdullai, a founding Director of Circumspect.com encouraged Ghanaian women to start using demographic means through the internet to promote issues that has to do with the girls and women to make publications on women understandable and easy to read or come by.
In a base line report conducted by Media Foundation for West Africa [MFWA] recently, it was revealed that instead of women using the internet to promote issues concerning girls and women, they rather use them on issues that are of no relevance to women empowerment, a bad practice that needs to cease.
At a workshop on Women’s Right Online in Ghana held by the Media Foundation for West Africa [MFWA], Ms. Abdullah insisted that women should come out of their cold and comfort zones to boldly defend and challenge the problems facing them.
Ms Abdullai noted that, “Women must bear it in mind that anything you do electronically especially through the internet never gets deleted easily, therefore the focus now on Women’s Right Online [WRO] initiative”.
By Sheila Williams
