Online Violence Against Women: The Limits & Possibilities of Law

Online forms of violence against women are frequently perceived as ‘not real’ due to the fact that abuse happens in the online sphere, including social media. This dichotomy between ‘offline’ and ‘online’ is not only incorrect when it comes to combatting online violence against women, but it also fails to take into account the fact that boundaries between ‘online’ and ‘offline’ aspects of everyday life are increasingly disappearing in the context of modern societies

More than Just a Teacher”: Anticipatory Advocacy as Vision and Defense in Urban High-need Schools

Specialized teacher preparation programs are graduating teachers with commitments to advocacy. This expanded definition of teaching stands in opposition to traditional expectations for the role of teachers that have developed during the history of U.S. education into organizational and social frames that reinforce tradition and work against reform. These influences constitute forces of professional weathering that may wear down teachers’ visions and actions for their work. This multicase study focused on four graduates from an intensive two-year teacher preparation program that included initial certification along with induction support in the second year of the program as they completed master’s degree requirements. The inquiry sought to understand how they envisioned their roles as teacher advocates and how they enacted and sustained their visions, resisting traditional teacher roles. Participants were graduates of the same cohort of the preparation program who were completing their second year of teaching in urban high-need schools and who had been nominated and confirmed as effective teachers of diverse students by faculty members of the university program and of local schools. Program materials were analyzed as background material to establish context. Primary data that were inductively and iteratively analyzed included extant course assignments, three individual interviews with each participant, three school-related observations, and three focus group interviews. Findings provide insight into the ways in which the teachers enacted a vision of anticipatory advocacy. Anticpatory advocacy includes intervening actions that are the result of a dual awareness of students’ immediate and future needs and have implications beyond boundaries of time and space in an effort to positively influence students’ lives in the immediate as well as distant future. The teachers, each of whom held beliefs that aligned with the culturally relevant foundations of the program prior to their selection, employed tools related to responsive classroom management, ambitious teaching strategies, and professional collaboration that they acquired and honed during their program. By working backward from the classrooms of effective teachers, the study links classroom practices with teacher preparation, providing direction for stakeholders concerned with the development and retention of high quality teachers for all children, especially in challenging school contexts

Online violence against women as an obstacle to gender equality: a critical view from Europe

Online violence against women operates – in an increasingly digital society – as an obstacle to gender equality. The 2018-2023 CoE Gender Equality Strategy sets a benchmark for the initiatives and policy changes across Europe to achieve gender equality. The strategy not only recognizes that ‘violence and sexual harassment of women in public space are strongly condemned [by the Istanbul Convention]’ but also notes a number of obstacles to gender equality which are rooted in online behaviours such as violent and degrading online content (including violent sexual threats online) and sexist online hate speech. Most recently, the EU Parliament highlighted the need to tackle online forms of VAW, including online misogyny and online harassment. Despite growing recognition at the European supranational level that violence against women is increasingly happening online, few steps have been taken in terms of law and policy making to combat these practices in a meaningful and cohesive way. In particular, limited attention has been paid to textual threats, harassment, and text-based abuse online, with the emphasis of legislators and policy makers falling predominantly on online image-based sexual abuse. Furthermore, fragmented approaches across European institutions and across EU member states compound this problem resulting in the current policy framework embodying the antithesis of equality when it comes to OVAW. This article critically examines the shortcomings of the current approaches to law and policy, highlighting the failings to date in enacting changes to address gender inequality at the European supranational level. It concludes by proposing practical solutions to addressing OVAW, especially online forms of gender-based harassment and hate speech

Online violence against women: addressing the responsibility gap?

The Internet is a place without challenge nor disruption, and increasingly instances of online abuse and harassment are targeted at women. Kim Barker and Olga Jurasz argue that little has been done to address the issue of responsibility for such acts, both at a domestic and international level, but also by the platforms themselves

Online Misogyny as Hate Crime

The ideal of an inclusive and participatory Internet has been undermined by the rise of misogynistic abuse on social media platforms. However, limited progress has been made at national – and to an extent European – levels in addressing this issue. In England and Wales, the tackling of underlying causes of online abuse has been overlooked because the law focuses on punishment rather than measures to prevent such abuses. Furthermore, online abuse has a significant impact on its victims that is underestimated by policymakers. This volume critically analyses the legal provisions that are currently deployed to tackle forms of online misogyny, and focuses on three aspects; firstly, the phenomenon of social media abuse; secondly, the poor and disparate legal responses to social media abuses; and thirdly, the similar failings of hate crime to tackle problems of online gender-based abuses. This book advances a compelling argument for legal changes to the existing hate crime, and communications legislation