Cyber Security
Women online: The power and promise of tech By Julie Inman Grant Australia’s eSafety Commissioner
It’s 6am. You roll over and start the daily routine—touch the phone on, check the weather, scan emails and messages. Get up, shower, dress, have breakfast. Hustle the kids through their morning while arranging the day with your partner and checking the news online. Head out the door for drop offs on the way to work. Power through the to do list, checking Facebook, Twitter, news sites, messages and emails during the day. Look at recipes online for dinner ideas. Bask in a little Pinterest as you wind down for the day while noting what the kids are looking at online. Head to bed with a little Netflix on the tablet, and fall asleep—with two devices nearby.
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his scenario is a common one. In Australia, a staggering 86% of households have home internet access . There’s much that appeals: technology has allowed us to expand our horizons in ways we could not have imagined only a decade ago. We now research, learn, read, watch, plan, play, share and communicate with friends, family, businesses and strangers online using a range of devices from smartphones to tablets, laptops, computers and gaming handsets. It’s a smorgasbord of entertainment, connection and experiences. There is a spectrum of benefits, from small-scale improvements in access and connection, all the way to opening up to previously unforeseen personal growth or overwhelming business success. The list is long and varied. But there is a flipside. For all the power that technologies have granted us, and the promise of improvements to our lives, there are also a range of shortcomings. And while negative experiences
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online are not solely the domain of women, females are unfairly represented as victims of cyber abuse and targets of appalling online behaviour. As an example: research conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that one in four Australian women has experienced emotional abuse from a current or former partner, and one in six Australian women has experienced violence from a current or former partner . In most cases this abuse and violence includes the use of technology to abuse, control and stalk . Of the one in five Australians who have experienced image-based abuse—when intimate, nude or sexual images or videos are shared without the consent of those pictured or are threatened to be shared—women between 18 and 24 years are most likely to be the targets . Women are also more likely to be targets of personal, sexual and genderbased cyber abuse than men. In a recent research project, my office looked at the experiences of women from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds and found that these women experience similar difficulties online, but also face additional barriers when it comes to seeking support for technology-facilitated abuse. Researchers noted a number of reasons for this: language barriers, a lack of trust in state institutions—based on experiences from their home country, not knowing what services are available to help, low digital literacy which heightens vulnerability to technologyfacilitated abuse and a lack of awareness that technology may constitute a criminal offence. Interestingly, the impacts of technology-facilitated abuse on CALD women are not
