Ending Technology-Facilitated Gender-based Violence (TFGBV) for Gender Equity in Global Health
4 December 2025
By Mariam Dahir, Clare Szalay Timbo, Francisca Castro Mendes, and Wanjiku Ngigi
An infectious-disease physician shares evidence-based updates about vaccines, and her social media fills with misogynistic insults and violent threats.
A reproductive-health researcher publishes new data on maternal mortality, and coordinated accounts brand her work “political,” flooding her inbox with messages telling her to stop.
A young health activist leads a campaign against gender-based violence (GBV), only to see her name, workplace, and city circulated online alongside derogatory comments about her character.
These are not hypotheticals.
For women leading change in health, including clinicians, researchers, policymakers, and activists, technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) is a rapidly escalating threat and reality. Such behavior undermines their safety, silences their voices, and discourages them from stepping into the leadership roles where they are most needed.
TFGBV: One of the Fastest-Growing Forms of GBV
According to UNFPA, TFGBV “is an act of violence perpetrated by one or more individuals that is committed, assisted, aggravated and amplified in part or fully by the use of information and communication technologies or digital media against a person on the basis of gender.”
The European Institute for Gender Equality estimates that 1 in 10 women has already experienced some form of cyber violence starting as young as by the age of 15. And the danger is not confined to screens – online violence frequently spills offline, threatening women’s safety, mental health, mobility, careers, and leadership opportunities.
As spotlighted in this year’s 16 Days of Activism against GBV UNiTE campaign, which calls for ending digital violence against women and girls, digital safety is fundamental to achieving gender equality.
Why TFGBV Matters for Health
As members of Women in Global Health, a women-led movement with 65 Chapters in over 60 countries, we know that women cannot fully or equally participate in health leadership if they are targeted, threatened, or silenced online or beyond.
The stark evidence is clear. During COVID-19, 67% of women physicians and scientists reported gender-based harassment on social media, compared with just 12% of men, most often in response to their health-related advocacy. A 2023 global study on women human-rights defenders found that 75% had experienced harassment or threats in recent years, including online attacks, with a documented increase compared to previous years.
TFGBV erodes women’s safety, silences their expertise, and discourages them from public leadership, at a time when health systems urgently need their voices.
Digital Platforms Can Advance Gender Equity in Health — When They Are Safe
Digital platforms have the potential to transform the health sector in ways that directly advance gender equity and women’s leadership. When designed and governed inclusively, they can expand women’s access to quality information and services, including sexual and reproductive health, mental health, and GBV support, while helping them overcome barriers of distance, stigma, and time. For women health and care workers, digital tools can create new pathways for training, mentorship, networking, and visibility, particularly in rural or under-resourced settings. Digital and online resources can also strengthen transparency and accountability by tracking inequities in pay, workloads, and career progression, and documenting violence and harassment. Emerging evidence shows that digital health technologies can positively affect women’s health, empowerment, and gender equality. This requires closing gender gaps in access, representation in data, and leadership in digital health institutions.
But these benefits are only possible when digital spaces are safe.
Without protection from TFGBV, digital tools and spaces become sources of harm and intimidation rather than empowerment.
Five Calls to Action to End TFGBV
Women in Global Health calls on governments, tech companies, employers, civil society, and global health institutions to act now:
1. Protect
Strengthen laws, platform standards, and workplace policies to safeguard women and girls’ digital rights, privacy, and safety.
2. Promote
Advance women’s leadership in digital health, technology governance, and data stewardship, especially for women from the Global South.
3. Prevent
Invest in digital literacy, safe-by-design technologies, and proactive systems that detect and reduce online harms.
4. Respond
Ensure survivor-centred, trauma-informed support, accessible reporting pathways, and accountability mechanisms that hold perpetrators responsible.
5. Partner
Build coalitions to co-create digital spaces where women in health can advocate, lead, and participate fully and safely.
A Call for Collective Action
TFGBV is not just a digital issue – it is a gender equity issue across health systems.
Ending TFGBV is essential for women to realize their right to health, exercise their leadership skills, and shape the policies, laws, and practices that affect everyone’s lives.
Together, we can build a digital world where every woman realizes her right to health and a life free from violence and discrimination.
We hope you will join us by supporting this Call to Action.
