Journal of Gender Based Violence call for special issue on the impact of technology

 

The Journal for Gender Based Violence is calling for abstracts to be submitted for articles for a special Edition on Digital Technologies and Gender Based Violence: Mechanisms for oppression, activism and recovery. This decision came following the September conference in Oslo – The third European Conference on Domestic Violence.  Over 8,000 delegates from 41 countries participated. A consistent theme was how digital technologies were impacting on understandings and responses to Gender Based Violence (GBV). The special issue represents a timely edition to this emerging field to critically explore how technologies can be used to perpetrate and reinforce GBV and simultaneously be a powerful tool for resistance, activism and recovery and the challenges this brings.

Their rationale is that Digital technology plays a fundamental role in all our lives, operating across public and private realms, often in ways many of us do not completely comprehend (Turke 2011). Technology facilitates forms of GBV which, even a decade ago, seemed unlikely (Woodlock 2016). New forms of technology provide perpetrators ever-growing ways to harass and control their victims using the tools of everyday life (Barter et al 2017, Tech Abuse 2017). As Woodlock concludes technology creates a sense of the perpetrator’s omnipresence to isolate, punish and humiliate. Alongside direct forms of technological GBV we have seen the rise in online misogynistic platforms and participatory communities, such as the Gamergate movement, as well as the recurrent targeting of girls and women by online trolls (United Nations 2015).

Specific topic areas may include:

  • Transdisciplinary understandings of technologically facilitated GBV
  • Power structures and social inequalities that shape the nature and dynamics of technologically facilitated GBV
  • Digital spaces being used to perpetuate and reinforce attitudes condoning GBV
  • Spyware and GBV surveillance
  • Criminal law in digital contexts
  • Links between new technology and GBV activism and support
  • Digital communities and their impact in real-word settings for GBV
  • Communities of support formed through the digital activism to resist GBV
  • Evaluation of technologically driven interventions for GBV survivors

If you would like to submit an abstract it should not exceed 500 words in length. Please send it to Dr Christine Barter, Cabarter@uclan.ac.uk, University of Central Lancashire, Connect Centre for International Research on Interpersonal Violence and Abuse no later than 1st April 2020. Please include your name and email contact details. Feedback and a decision will be provided by May 15th.

 

 

Warnings that domestic violence increases as a result of self-isolation

With millions of people in China spending time indoors, rights activists say there have been increasing instances of domestic violence.

Guo Jing, a female activist who had only moved to Wuhan – the origin of the virus – in November 2019, says she has personally received enquiries from young people living in the quarantined city about witnessing domestic violence. She commented that callers often had no idea who to ask for help. Additionally, there have been reports of women seeking to leave their village or town being refused permits by the police due to the increased risk of spreading the virus.

Further warnings regarding increases in abusive behaviour are also being reported in the UK. Claire Barnett, the executive director for UN Women UK, said there is “clear evidence” that economic and social disruption internationally increases the likelihood of domestic violence. She says “When communities undergo additional stress – from disease, to drought, to their local football team losing a match – rates of violence rise,”

Commentators explain that this is partly because isolation and financial abuse are common features of domestic abuse relationships and this can exploited more during a pandemic. “The imposition of self-isolation can amplify the abuser’s ability to restrict women’s freedoms and leave them at heightened risk,” Hitchen the campaigns manager for the End Violence Against Women Coalition explained.

You can read about the effects on domestic violence in China here. A news article discussing increased in the UK is available here.