State Response to Violence against Women on Social Media

Abstract

With the increase in the advent of new social media platforms, women around the world have turned vulnerable to technological crimes like morphing, fake profiling and cyberbullying. Though the provisions of IPC and provisions of Information Technologies Act try to prevent these crimes to an extent, the efficiency of these laws is still a matter of doubt. Further, society trains women to ignore the cyberbullying that they face in social media. This forces the women to keep themselves out of social media platforms or to hide their identity while being in the platform. Technology, which is supposed to be a liberating force having the power to fill in the existing gaps and disadvantages that women face in society, has proved counterproductive by siding itself with the earlier institutions of patriarchy.