Author: Dr. Priti Jaggi
We all are living in a digital world where from making online friends to earning our livelihood, all moments in our lives are touched by the boon of internet. This digital era is just like a double-edged sword where unless we are well versed and aware with its adverse effects, it can be disastrous and tormenting especially for minors and women. They become easy targets because of lack of the opportunities to be aware about the dark side of the internet.
There are many cases we can uncover where women and girls are captured in the digital trust cage, lured by deceiving statements and are finally either harassed, bullied or even assaulted. The cases of identity theft, fake profiles or anonymous profiles are so prevalent that the perpetrators attack the vulnerable and then simply deactivate their profiles. Women and girls are more susceptible to being cyber-bullied, sexually exploited online, trolled, stalked and harassed by cyber bullies who weaponize gender stereotypes.
Today is a high time, we need to protect women and girls digitally as well. Fostering and nurturing the guardrails for them to raise their voices and complaints against such cyber crimes must be their fundamental rights. There is a need to propagate the education and culture of cyber safety, precautionary measures and mitigation steps which must be commonly accessible. Some of the broad strategies to foster digital trust among women and girls are mentioned here:
- Online Literacy & Awareness – Creating awareness and educating women and girls about digital literacy, online safety and trigger alerts to recognise cyber fraud.
- Unbiased AI Model Designs – Ensuring that AI LLM models are free from any gender biasness or gender preconceptions and are inclusive in its foundational approach.
- Support & Resources – There is a requirement to build a robust support system for victim of cyber abuse so that she can get right & timely counselling, advise or legal aid without hesitation or name shaming.
- Regulations & Policies – It’s a high time, that our Government of India must propagate policies to advocate digital safety for women and girls and take stringent actions on abusers and cyber bullies.
- Data Privacy Law Enforcement – India has enacted DPDP Act’23 on 11th August,2023 which covers data protection of all individuals in India and giving the decision about their data in their hands. Enforcement of this regulation specially on social media giants like Meta, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube is must so that none of the personal data goes outside India.
- Slogans & Infographic Messages – Every telecom service provider, social media giants must share cyber safety messages on periodic basis so that its embedded in everyone’s conscious and sub-conscious minds.
- Actions & Penalties – Government of India must have a dedicated team to levelized actions like blocking of IP addresses for repeat offenders, imposition of fines for cyber bullies, conducting cyber patrolling on regular basis, etc to ensure there are severe consequences. Even there must be a mandatory cyber awareness day to be celebrated on monthly basis.
- Societal Collaboration & Networks – Collaboration of internet service providers, NGOs and law enforcement agency must be ingrained with local communities to ensure that all cyber complaints are timely actioned and justice is served. A strong emotional network among our societies must be formed to save every women and girl from cyber abusers.
- STEM promotion for women – An encouraged women to bolster towards technical education is the foundational step of a strong, independent and aware nation. Empowering the women and girls by scholarships, job prospects, inclusive corporate environment will give show a new dawn towards cyber education and cyber security literacy.
- Corporate Responsibility – Another form of CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility is to enhance the digital trust among women and girls while designing any website or online products. Ensuring and assuring digital principals like purpose limitation, data minimization, consent, grievance redressal, must be well planned to ensure robust implementation.
Corporates, societies, you and me, we all are not together to fight the intricacies of digital trust among women, we would be able to develop and enforce effective strategies.
“Beti ko digitally bhi padhao, aur cyber abusers se bachaoo”