Rabat- As celebrations are underway for International Women’s Day it is equally important to reflect on the challenges that women are facing.
While technology and the digital era booms, Morocco’s High Commission for Planning HCP has uncovered that digital violence makes up 19% of the total violence recorded against women and girls in Morocco, accumulating a total of nearly 1.5 million women who experience this modern form of violence in the country.
HCP’S report reflects this year’s UN focus for International Women’s Day: For an inclusive digital world: innovation and technologies for gender equality. As many women and girls around the world are left behind without access to this digital era, they find themselves cut off from all the resources that are easily taken for granted.
Although such access to the internet and technology can equally pose risks, especially for young or vulnerable individuals, the HCP report found that access to technology resulted in increasing chances of receiving abuse from a stranger.
In total, 73% of the abuse cases recorded involved a man that was unknown to the victim, whereas almost 4% of incidents incriminated a man that was known to the victim, whether he was a relative, partner, work colleague, or friend.
The report praised Morocco as being one of the few countries that came forward with the data, noting: “Morocco is one of the first countries to have presented for the second time, in the space of 5 years, their national reports on the implementation of the SDGs at the United Nations High Level Political Forum for Development.”
Data shows that the risk of falling victim to digital violence rises for those living in urban locations (16%). Other highly affected groups are women with a higher education (25%) rate and young women aged 15-19 with 29%.
Regressing progress
At this year’s 76th session of the EU Commission officials discussed the worsening situation of digital violence in the context of International Women’s Day. Expressing his concerns over the alarming situation, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that “progress won over decades is vanishing before our eyes.”
Guterres noted how many rights for women are being reverted, calling for action especially in the Global South. The “UN stands with women and girls everywhere,” he stressed.
The Secretary General’s Envoy on Technology, Amandeep Singh Gill, both praised and criticized the digital era. While today’s technological advances have given unprecedented opportunities to women and girls, the digital era also “holds a mirror to the ugliness of our world,” Gill said.
Technology has increased issues such as objectifying women and girls as the reach of pornography has been expanded, he argued, adding that this in turn has led to a steep increase in gender-based violence.
While there are still not enough women included in the digital sphere, Gill lamented, women can and should play a pivotal role in research and development “to prevent the misuse of digital platforms and change how the digital future will look 10 or 15 years from now.”
He claims that $1 trillion global gross domestic product has been lost because of the exclusion of women from technology, urging Silicon Valley to do its utmost to ensure women’s participation in all aspects of digital immersion.
Despite the growth in digital use among women and girls, Guterres noted that 3 billion people are without internet access, and the vast majority are women and girls in developing countries. According to the UN chief, just 19% of women are online in the least developed countries.
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