Gender/Research

In this article published in the Economic & Political Weekly (12 January 2019), Amrita Vasudevan revisits current debates on the liability of internet intermediaries in India, in the context of violence against women online. 

Read the paper here.

Every once in a while, there is the high optics drama about a woman celebrity or public persona who has been trolled, and then, predictably, the dust settles. But make no mistake. This is but the proverbial tip of an iceberg that is ballooning.

The internet-mediated world presents a…

Digital technologies have generated unprecedented ways of being and doing, dramatically changing the social and economic order. Recoding human subjectivity and social interactions, they recast power relationships. Gender relations are centrally implicated in this shift to a networked sociality…

Technologies that map women’s bodies and reproductive choices are a site of patriarchal control and surveillance while simultaneously creating an illusion of choice or autonomy for users. This report recognizes and examines the ways in which the absence of safeguards for sensitive and personal…

This discussion paper argues that the omnipresence of the digital demands a re-evaluation of legal-institutional response to violence against women. The networked logic of the Internet, and social media platforms that overrun it bank upon virality, effectively rendering ineffectual notions of ‘…

The criminal legal system is built on a hierarchy of offences. This is evident from the punishment accorded to different crimes which range from the death penalty to a fine. Brutality of an act is one way in which offences are arranged. For instance, the National Crimes Records Bureau has…

This exploratory research study of gender-based cyber violence was led by IT for Change with feminist partners across six sites of study in India, and covered the states of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The research used mixed methods - self administered surveys with college students between…

World-over, technology-mediated violence against women is growing to be a serious social problem. Women’s full and free participation in digital spaces presupposes a safe online environment, but going online seem to be fraught with the risk of violence for women. Governments, especially in…

Unmasking the web

“#MeToo” – the spontaneous and unstructured campaign, exposed the underbelly of sexual harassment. This campaign would not have had the results it did were it not for the Internet. However, this very same domain with its limitless reach becomes one of the most vicious…

It’s the end of an era for online activism. We have lost our safe, small, intimate spaces of digital publishing to corporate giants, state-run troll armies, and idiotic online commentary. We must recognise that the politics and policing of this space have shifted under our fingertips and that we…

Drawing from IT for Change’s work, this submission provides an overview of legislative and judicial developments in India with respect to online violence against women…

This position paper looks at the issue of intermediary filtering in the context of two Supreme Court cases. The first was a petition filed by activist Sabu Matthew George in 2008, asking for a ban on advertisements on search engines related to pre-natal sex determination. The…

First published in LSE’s Women Peace and Security blog, this article discusses the need for a feminist jurisprudence on violence against women. Laws on online VAW draw from foundational ideas that have informed interpretations of gender-based (in) justice, recognizing the immersion of human…

Our discussion paper on the issue of technology-mediated violence against women analyses the adequacy of the current legal and institutional frameworks in India and proposes alternate models that need to be debated and analysed. The paper raises a series of questions on overhauling the existing…

Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami authored two issue papers for Association for Progressive Communication's research series on 'Internet and ICTs for social justice and development'. The papers examine a history of feminist engagement with development and digital technologies, and chalk out…