Gender, Technology, and Digital Violence In Turbulent Times: Emerging Challenges and Pathways to Justice

Digital technologies have transformed social, political, and economic life, creating new opportunities for communication, participation, and empowerment. However, these technologies have also become sites where existing gender inequalities are reproduced, intensified, and contested. In an era marked by rapid technological advancement, political polarization, and growing digital dependence, women, girls, LGBTQ+ persons, and other marginalized groups increasingly face various forms of technology-facilitated gender-based violence. Online harassment, cyberstalking, hate speech, non-consensual image sharing, deepfake pornography, algorithmic discrimination, doxxing, and AI-generated harms are emerging as significant threats to dignity, privacy, security, and equal participation in public life.

This session invites sociological analyses of the intersections between gender, technology, power, and human rights in the context of contemporary global turbulence. It seeks to explore how digital platforms, artificial intelligence, surveillance technologies, and data-driven systems shape gendered experiences and reinforce or challenge existing structures of inequality. The session also aims to examine the role of digital spaces as sites of resistance, solidarity, feminist activism, and advocacy for social justice.

By bringing together scholars from different regions and disciplines, this session aims to advance sociological understanding of digital violence and contribute to the development of more equitable, inclusive, and rights-based digital futures.