TFGBV Report
Report on the prevalence of TFGBV during the 2023 PEI Provincial election & a policy reccomendation for pei political parties
This report aims to serve as a starting point to introduce the topic of technology-facilitated gender-based violence and its direct connection to women’s political participation in Prince Edward Island.
Technology-facilitated violence (TFV), sometimes referred to as cyberviolence, is an accelerating global and local issue. This encompasses a wide range of aggressive behaviours that are enacted using information and communications technologies such as computers, cell phones, GPS tracking devices, and artificial intelligence. Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), Snapchat, WhatsApp, and other popular social media platforms are the most common locations for incidents of cyberviolence.
While anyone can be the target of cyberviolence, women and girls, racialized people, and gender and sexually diverse people are disproportionately harassed. In particular, women who regularly engage in public online platforms, e.g. politicians, journalists, academics, and activists, face an additional risk of being targeted. The ultimate goal of these attacks is to deter women from pursuing positions of leadership.
With the provincial elections slated for 2023, the Coalition wanted to research the prevalence and forms of technology-facilitated violence affecting women and gender-diverse candidates on the Island. The Coalition met with the presidents of provincial political parties and asked whether they had a policy pertaining to cyberviolence prevention and response. No party had any such policy and all parties agreed that having a cyberviolence policy would be useful. This gap inspired us to develop a set of recommendations informed by researched best practices and local candidate interviews. Our policy template provides standardised rules on how parties can actively respond to and prevent TFV. This report aims to serve as a starting point to introduce the topic of technology-facilitated gender-based violence and its direct connection to women’s political participation in Prince Edward Island.
View and download the report to learn about technology-facilitated violence against women and gender diverse candidates on PEI: