Virtual Crime and Women

The rapid expansion of internet-enabled media and digital communication technologies in India has sparked a new wave of political enthusiasm among net-savvy citizens and opened up exciting avenues for social relations among millennials. Latest estimates suggest that 30% of Indians have internet access, and a majority of them access the net on mobile phones. However, a persistent gender gap in digital access has accompanied the impressive growth of digital technologies and internet communications. Even more, regressive gender tropes and violence against women have penetrated the digital spaces, leaving the optimists to rethink their pronouncements on the possibility for radical empowerment through the digital.

Debarati Halder and K Jaishankar’s book makes a useful contribution to contemporary debates on digital communications by examining cybercrimes and offences against girls and women in India. Taking a sociolegal perspective, the authors provide an up-to-date discussion of the existing legal structure and policy challenges, together with illustrative cases. Scholarship on gender and digital communications in the West has grown tremendously in the last years. Studies on India’s internet landscape are yet to reflect the vast spread and the rapid pace of digital penetration across urban and rural India. Issues of access, digital politics, digital sociality and regulation warrant more empirical work and a systematic documentation of the policy shifts and legal infrastructure.