By RIva Jalipa.
This is a background to the “safer web for Women comic strip” that was produced by KICTANet.
Most women will attest to being sexualised long before they knew they were women – or being treated less, long before they ever considered what they were or were not capable of. This reality is no different online. In fact, it is amplified.
Actions expressing long-established stereotypes of women’s worth deriving from their purity, ability to find and keep a husband, bear children and to make and stay at a home are exacerbated online. The domination of patriarchy through violence is magnified online in ways that would not be possible or at least to the same extent in the physical world.
In a story of three differently-aged, differently-shaped, and differently-employed women we see what violence can look like online, how the seemingly harmless can actually contribute to it, and what we can all do to prevent it and to create a safer space for women online. As a society, we are only as strong as our least powerful person and we can only hope for a better tomorrow if we stop disempowering them through our actions both online and offline.
