Gender-based Violence and Digital Technology: Women with Disabilities Experiences and their Practices of Safety and Wellbeing in South Africa

As technology develops, it broadens the scope for potential opportunities for violence and abuse, both by exacerbating conventional forms of Gender Based Violence and by perpetrating qualitatively new forms of violence that were previously impossible, or which take a fundamentally different form online (Bansal et al., 2023; Barter Koulu, 2021; Dunn, 2020; Hinson et al., 2018; Lenhart et al., 2016). During an era of intensified digital penetration in the sub-Saharan region, digital inclusion not only enabled women and girls with disabilities to shape their narrative and make their voices heard via digital technologies, but also opened up the risk of reproducing and entrenching long standing forms of discrimination, deep social stigmatization and covert everyday forms of microaggressions towards people with disabilities. As the emerging data suggests this has become particularly intensified even more so for women and girls with disability (UN Women & WHO, 2023).

There is a dearth of research that explicitly investigates, documents and identifies appropriate responses to gendered-disability technology-facilitated violence beyond resource rich nations. The data that exists on TFGBV is not aggregated according to disability, and African data is especially limited. Cyberbullying has been widely reported in the region (Mooketsi, 2018; Mulisa & Getahun, 2018; Olumide et al., 2016; Sall, 2017; Sam et al., 2019). In addition, “romance scams” (online dating scams) have been reported in countries including Ghana, South Africa, Togo, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Kenya, and Malaysia, as well as countries in the global north (Edwards et al., 2018). In one study, more than 45% of 18 to 45-year-old female users of Facebook or Twitter in West and Central Africa reported having experienced some form of GBV on social media (Internet Sans Frontières, 2019). There is also evidence of severe physical and sexual violence arising from internet-facilitated dating and intimate relationships in Africa, sometimes resulting in rape and/or murder (Idongesit, 2014; Makinde et al., 2016). However, it is not clear if any of the abovementioned studies included people with disabilities. Extant research primarily emerges from high-income countries (HICs), usually focuses on cyberbullying among adolescents, or does not include people with disabilities (Afrouz, 2023; Backe et al., 2018; Dunn, 2020; Kim & Ferraresso, 2023). In addition, in LMICs most of the research about the intersection of disability and digital technology has focused on access and accessibility (Ellis & Kent, 2011; Trevisan, 2014), especially concerning online government platforms for accessing disability specialist service provision (Goggin & Soldatić, 2022). There is little evidence on the various manifestations of TFGBV and its intersections with disability in the context of LMICs, such as South Africa. Given this incomplete understanding of a complex and rapidly growing phenomenon, a study to capture the breadth of existing information on technology-facilitated violence and abuse against women with disabilities in South Africa is needed.