Solutions Emerge At SheThePeople's Online Safety Summit

The national capital on Tuesday witnessed the second edition of the Online Safety Summit for Women by SheThePeople.TV at India Habitat Centre. The summit discussed solutions for increasing online gendered abuse, sexual harassment of women through online portals and misinformation targeting women. It is supported by Facebook, Twitter, Colors, and UN Women.

The summit identified steps taken by various digital platforms to protect women from risks of identity exploitation, financial risks and emotional harassment and creating awareness, policy and law enforcement. It also helped to highlight the importance of digital literacy as more and more women get online.

Online Safety Summit

The summit, which focuses on solutions to real world problems, was inaugurated by Shaili Chopra, Founder of SheThePeople.TV. Other key speakers at the event were: Ankhi Das from Facebook, KG Suresh Director IIMC, Syed Nazakat Editor DataLEADS, Rahul Srivastava of UP Police, Mahima Kaul from Twitter, Anja Kovacs, Nazia Erum, Kalpana Vishwanath from Safetipin, IT expert Prasanto Roy, Ranjana Kumari from CSR, advocate Talish Ray, BBC’s Trushar Barot, Kunal Mazumder of India Correspondent Committee to Protect Journalists and activist Gurmehar Kaur.

Speaking on the same, Shaili Chopra said, “Safety of women online today needs a holistic approach and we are proud that SheThePeople.TV with its workshops across the country, in-depth research papers and multi-city summit editions is leading with solutions. The patriarchal behaviour extends to the online world, including a backward value system that believes access to data and internet is ‘ruining’ the lives of women. We focus on a positive dialogue and put the spotlight on solutions and safety tools available for women.”

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Ankhi Das, Facebook's Public Policy Director, India, South and Central Asia, said, “Promoting safe spaces for women on Facebook is very important to us. Research shows us that in addition to normative barriers, concerns around online safety prevent more online participation by women. In order to address this, we work with a variety of non-profits, academics and our community in India to help develop products, tools, policies that are safety-centric. We also run public education programs to build awareness and community capacity."

Speaking about the summit, Mahima Kaul from Twitter said, “We are happy to be partnering with @SheThePeople to host this important discussion. Platforms like the #SafetySummit provide an important opportunity to learn and engage with our larger community and update them on the work Twitter does on online safety, which is a priority area for us.”

Another edition of the safety summit this year will be held later in September in Mumbai. The workshop's theme is Online Safety: Tools and Methodologies, organized by Feminism in India.