As Nepali women celebrated the festival of Teej last week and hosted dar parties in the days before, social media brimmed with videos of dressed-up women, finally relieved from their familial responsibilities, enjoying themselves to the fullest. However, as in previous years, Nepali men didn’t want to leave them alone as they slid into their DMs and comment sections with hate speech and trolls criticising the women and body-shaming them. Such forms of online harassment aren’t seen only during festivals but are an everyday experience for many Nepali women. The internet has become an appendage of the physical reality where violence against women manifests in varied forms, including physical threats, sex trolling, zoom bombing, cyber flashing, revenge porn, etc.

Moreover, it has become easier for the perpetrators to target many women at the same time using different online personas. This is evident in the data of the Cyber Bureau of Nepal, where 882 cyber crime cases against women were recorded in just the first two months of the fiscal year 2024-25. The past trends paint a worrying picture, as the bureau reported a total of 5,574 online harassment cases between 2016 and 2020. There were 9,013 reported cybercrime cases, with 4,590 filed by women in the fiscal year 2022-23. The following year saw an approximate of 90.52 percent increase in cybercrime cases filed by women, for a total of 8,745 cases.

With the advancement of digital technologies and the rise of AI content, women are being subjected to more forms of online abuse. A 2019 study revealed that 96 percent deepfake online videos were pornographic, highlighting how they are being used to demean women. In recent years, female journalists, celebrities and politicians have been repeatedly targeted online. The private lives of female politicians are endlessly scrutinised, and they face judgements online based on their intelligence and appearance. A report in 2021 showed that the Finnish female government ministers, including former Prime Minister Sanna Marin, were routinely criticised as the “lipstick government” or “Tampax team” on X. In our own country, this is apparent in the recent trolling of former Minister of Education, Science and Technology Sumana Shrestha and Deputy Mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City, Sunita Dangol

In Nepal, where per capita internet use is higher than in some developed countries but digital literacy is low, lack of cyber regulation creates a breeding ground for cyber violence. Section 47 of the Electronic Transaction Act, 2007 states that publishing material that harms public morality or decent behaviour could result in a fine of Rs 100,000 and up to five years of imprisonment. It doesn’t define what falls under these terms. Moreover, the Act doesn’t mention revenge porn or other forms of cyber abuse. We must have a strict legal framework as the platforms’ Community Standards and reporting systems on content removal can only do so much, especially in non-English languages where the bots can’t recognise local languages, slang and dialects. The issue has clearly not gotten the priority it should: a recent Post report revealed that the Cyber Bureau in Nepal is highly understaffed and underfunded, with only 26 of a desired staff level of 106 handling the IT department that solves cases.

Cyber violence towards women underscores the bigger problem of misogyny ingrained in our societies. When misogynists see women taking up space and challenging traditional gender roles online, they police and shun them on the same platform. Without having a proper regulatory mechanism in place, technological advancement will only further help these moral police. It is time we took online violence against women seriously and stopped robbing them of their right to expression.