"Not recognizing online violence against women has a huge impact on equality."

Eleonora Esposito, researcher at group ' Public discourse' of Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), leads a project at the European Institute for Gender Equality against Cyber Violence, part of the European Commission. Her goal is to clearly define online violence in order to establish appropriate regulations, thus improving the experience of the online world for women.  

- What is the project that you carry out in the EIGE?
The project on "Cyber-violence against Women and Girls" is the first of its kind to be carried out by high school. It tries to map all the data, policies, and statistical and legal definitions of cyber-violencethat exist in the member countries of the European Union (EU). In order to be able to implement policies on cyber-violence, it is necessary to have a clear definition common to all EU countries. In the absence of a single definition and a common way of collecting data, the data is rarely of high quality. For example, when they are collected, they are not distinguished by gender, age... so that different forms of violence overlap and are not clearly identified.

At project we have analysed the different definitions of EU Member States in order to develop a common definition. Thus, we have established a definition of cyber-violence against women and girls as an umbrella definition that encompasses more specific phenomena such as, for example, cyberstalking, cyberharassment, image-based sexual abuse. These definitions are gender-specific: they explicitly mention gender as a cause of the phenomenon. The final goal is that these definitions will be adopted by Member States and that data will start to be compiled at national and European level on the basis of these definitions. This should result in better informed and evidence-based policy-making on gender-based cyber-violence.

- What criteria have you identified for recognising online violence?
After mapping all definitions at international and European level, we have identified commonalities between them. For example, we have come to distinguish two phenomena such as cyberharassment and cyberstalking, which often overlap. We have to take into account the different impact that each act has on the victims, whether the perpetrator is always the same, whether it is repeated frequently or not, whether there is a 

obsessive intent, if there is abuse of personal data . In this case, we have found that a victim of cyberstalking feels much more harassed than a victim of cyberharassment and this is marked, among other factors, by the repetition of the acts by the same perpetrator, for example. 

- Recognising cyber-violence, then, can be difficult. What are the consequences of not recognising it?
Huge. The problem with not recognising violence in the cybersphere is, first and foremost, impunity. If it is not recognised as violence, it is very difficult for victims to feel protected by institutions and to get support, for example from the police or the justice system, when they report it. Very many people do not report acts of cyber-violence, firstly, because they do not understand that they are victims of a crime; secondly, because when they do understand it, they know that they have very few rights. Thus, when it comes to legal proceedings, it is very difficult for the perpetrator to be identified and then punished. This results in women and girls having an experience of the whole digital world that is very different from that of men, because they are much more vulnerable and potential victims. What does this imply? Given that in the contemporary world, especially after the pandemic, so many activities take place on network, this means de facto excluding women from so many activities. Failure to recognise this violence has a huge impact on equality: educational economic, political, representational, etc. 

- Faced with this form of violence, and with no means of reclaiming anything, the temptation to withdraw from the networks is very great. What happens if we women withdraw from the digital public space?
These acts of violence often have the effect of expelling women's voices from the networks: it is a question of maintaining a space that, like all public spaces, has traditionally been masculine and that remains masculine. Withdrawing from the networks is one of the most immediate reactions. It is said in psychology that we have two basic reactions, "fight or flight", fight or flight. Retreat is the easiest, because fighting this form of violence is the fight of one against thousands, millions. Managing this is very difficult: dealing with these forms of cyber-violence alone is a process that takes a lot of time and energy. What do you do: do you respond to everyone? Do you stand up to everyone?

This can greatly affect women's public visibility. If women are prevented from having a digital presence, how do they build their public image, for example, in the eyes of an electorate? For women in politics, digital presence is extremely important: if they cannot have it, we are drastically reducing their chances of reaching or maintaining power. 

- As an academic, do you share your work on social media? Have you ever felt this violent response to your work?
Maybe I have internalised some practices so as not to be very visible on social networks. Maybe I avoid it from the beginning because I know very well how these forms of speech work. I share to a certain extent and I do it in places where I know I won't have many problems: for example, in media such as Academia.edu or Researchgate, which I know are safer spaces. I don't share my work much on networks like Facebook or Twitter. I don't like to be very visible on these networks; maybe because I know very well what the dangers are.

Because of the way these subject platforms are structured, it is very difficult to have meaningful conversations - because of the character limit, because of the speed they demand. In the end, in these media we talk through slogans and the academic work tries to go deeper into the issues. 

Certainly, I have seen the case of researchers who have a more public profile and yes, there is a lot of tension and they also suffer harassment. Being very visible, of course, exposes you to many risks.